[linux-cifs-client] osx-cifs-client ?

[Christopher R. Hertel]

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 01:32:32PM -0600, Timothee Besset wrote:
> Well I think are mistaken. And it's quite surprising for someone with an 
> @samba.org email address. They have an smbfs client, but they don't 
> have a cifs client ( unless it's in the next release of OSX - Tiger - 
> which I didn't get my hands on yet ).

Need a little more in-depth research here, methinks.

CIFS is just a new name for the Microsoft filesharing protocol suite.  
The CIFS name was introduced in the mid/late '90s when Microsoft was
worried about Sun's WebNFS.  CIFS is just SMB or, to some folks, SMB and
it's entourage.  See:

  http://ubiqx.org/cifs/Intro.html#INTRO.2

> I need working file locking semantics, which only a CIFS client gives me..

You'll get the intersection of what the client and server support.

Apple's CIFS client software is based on the FreeBSD SMBFS by Boris Popov
(and is not related to the Linux SMBFS except that Boris spent some time
reading existing code).  The folks at Apple who work on that code know
what they're doing, but they set priorities based on business needs.  If
you need a feature that's not yet implemented your best bet is either to
add it to the Open Source FreeBSD/Darwin SMBFS and hope they'll adopt it,
or to request it through Apple.  Maybe both.

I'm not sure if it's possible to use the FreeBSD/Darwin SMBFS code in 
place of the Apple code on the Mac.

Chris -)-----

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh at ubiqx.org