> Is there a CIFS howto? is cifs-vfs standalone or a > supplement to Samba?
CIFS VFS is a Linux kernel component (can be compiled as a module cifs.o) which provides a more functional alternative to the smbfs client for accessing Windows 2000 and later and Samba or equivalent SMB/CIFS servers which also provides file semantics that are much more Unix/Linux friendly (POSIX-like file API behavior). The project page http://us1.samba.org/samba/Linux_CIFS_client.html includes more information about it but has not been udpated to note progress of the past month or so. The fs/cifs/README file at http://cvs.samba.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/cifsvfs/fs/cifs/README?rev=1.20&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup contains howto instructions for its use and there is some information that has been posted to mailing lists about which cases in which smbfs must still be used instead of cifs vfs even in 2.6 but generally the older smbfs must be used instead of cifs vfs if 1) access to NT4 or Win98 servers is required or 2) the kernel is 2.4 and detailed errors on mount need to be reported or 3)you are using most current smbfs and most current smbmnt/smbmount from Samba 3.0 and you require the use of Kerberos or NTLMv2 cifs vfs is typically used in cases in which: 1) Windows 2003 is the server or smb/cifs packet signing (a useful security feature) is required or 2) the servers are relatively newer (Windows 2000 or later, or Samba 2.2.7 or later) or 3) POSIX like semantics (e.g. deleting or renaming open or read-only files) are desired or 4)The kernel is 2.6 and you need better network file read/write performance or 5) better internationalization is needed (Unicode) or 6) safe caching (oplock) is needed for network data integrity For Linux 2.6, cifs vfs is included in the standard kernel, for 2.4 based kernels it depends on the distribution whether the module is included or not (SuSE includes it for example). The CIFS VFS has better performance and function on 2.6 due to enhancements made to the core kernel itself. For both 2.6 and 2.4 versions of the cifs vfs client, I expect to release updates in the next week, probably with version number 1.0.3 that will include very important fixes found during testing over the past two months. The CIFS module does include an optional mount helper (which is especially useful for 2.4) which is recommended to be installed (and found in the Samba 3 CVS tree as called mount.cifs.c) smbfs, although it has received less attention over the last year, does include more function in its 2.6 version than its 2.4 version as well and smbfs is still required for accessing older NT4 servers and Windows 98 servers, and on 2.4 Linux kernels is reasonably well tested. The two kernel modules (cifs.o and smbfs.o) can coexist but over time I plan to add enough function to make cifs.o be able to at least handle the NT4 server case which will lessen the need for smbfs in some of those environments. -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
