[linux-cifs-client] mount.cifs name resolution

[Steve French]

> I'm using cifs client with samba3.0.0. It seems only using DNS for
> name resolution. Could it be improved?

Are you interested in RFC1001 (older Netbios-over-TCP style) name
resolution?  DNS name resolution, which is what the mount.cifs mount
helper does for resolving the server name (ip addresses are also
accepted) seemed easier and more widely accepted these days, although
with minor changes mount.cifs could do lmhosts style mappings from
entries in a file to ip addresses, or with slightly larger changes it
could do local subnet RFC1001 broadcasts.

A distinct issue is getting it to work with NT4 servers (Windows 2000 or
later or Samba currently is the minimum) - since NT4 requires that the
SMBNegprot frame be preceeded by an RFC1001 session initialize (and the
dummy name "*SMBSERVER" must be used in that frame if the RFC1001 server
name is not specified).  That change probably is worth it and shouldn't
be too hard but whether NT4 supports a modern enough version of the
required Transact2 infolevels to handle the current CIFS dialect is an
open question.