[linux-cifs-client] Add support infrastructure for Named Pipe

[Gerald Carter]

Steve,

Just a few points.  Feel free to ignore or respond.  The only
point I'm making here is that other solutions do exist already.
I'm not advocating our code as a solution for this debate.
Just pointing out that this is a well traveled problem (as you
know).


Steve French wrote:

> a few quick points:
> 1) Easier: Even without extending cifs.ko with anny new ioctls, we
> already can do simple RPC operations over existing cifs.ko today (with
> prototype user space code that does the DCE part bind etc.).
> Currently there is no user space SMB client library that could be used
> broadly by Linux applications and tools, although libsmbclient can be
> used by those which are gpl.

The Likewise rdr driver inside lwiod already does all this. [1]
The client library is LGPLv2.1+.  However, it does require IPC
to a locally running daemon so it does handle the credential/connection
caching.


> 2) Affinity with other file objects: Although not available 
> in Linux -
...
> 3) Usability: Since the file system client does not use 
> the server's (or smbclient's) smb.conf file for configuration
> settings (security levels, signing etc.), it can be confusing
> e.g. to list shares with smbclient (with looser security
> settings) and not be able to connect to the share (with cifs.ko
> using stricter security settings).

Ditto.

> 4) Performance: The cifs kernel client can connect to a server and
> keep a session - but with smbclient and the libsmbclient model in
> general you can end up reconnecting dozens of times to the server from
> the same client (even though a session to the server already exists in
> kernel).  In addition connecting via to the same server from via
> smbclient from (when you already e.g. have a kernel mount to it) can
> cause the "SMB NAT problem" in some versions of Windows.

Connection caching I will agree on which I mentioned in point #1.
Although I don't believe throughput is really an issue on named
pipes so that part of performance is not valid IMO.




cheers, jerry
--
[1]  http://git.likewiseopen.org/?p=likewise-open.git;a=summary




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