[linux-cifs-client] TCP Name not found when mounting CIFS share

[BJ Quinn]

When I try to mount a CIFS share, for example by using the command...

mount -t cifs //foxserver2/database /test

I get the following error:

mount error: could not find target server. TCP name foxserver2/database not
found  rc = 16720

When I try:

mount -t smbfs //foxserver2/database /test       or       mount -t cifs
//192.168.1.6/database /test


... it works.  We don't have a DNS server, so it looks like CIFS can't find
the name of the other server.  If I specify the IP Address to the mount -t
cifs command, it works fine.  We'd rather use CIFS for a few reasons.
However, we don't have a DNS server and we're using DHCP on several of the
clients, so I can't use static IPs to refer to these windows machines (I'm
trying to make a linux backup server).

Also, another problem I had with "mount -t smbfs" that I was hoping would go
away with CIFS was the "soft mounting" issue.  My backup script went great
until some idiot shut down his computer when I was in the middle of backing it
up, and it seemed that mounting the share via SMBFS was some kind of hard
mount and the script would pretty much get hung waiting for the computer to
reconnect, and actually wouldn't even reconnect after the computer was
restarted.  I'm just hoping that CIFS will allow a sort of soft mount - if you
can't connect to the share, throw an error and keep on going.  Is this the
case?  Thanks in advance for your help!

-BJ Quinn