[linux-cifs-client] Manual page for mount.cifs credentials option

[Jeff Layton]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:29:47 -0400
Scott Lovenberg <scott.lovenberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jeff Layton wrote:On Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:49:05 -0400
> Scott Lovenberg <scott.lovenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>   Not sure if this is the correct place to file this report, if not, please point me in the correct direction.
> 
> The credentials option for mount.smbfs used to be the following format:
>     user=name
>     password=pass
> 
> I've found that the format supported for mount.cifs is:
>     username=name
>     password=pass
> 
> This seems at odds with the manual page for mount.cifs under the user=arg option:
>     [...]
>            Note
>            The cifs vfs accepts the parameter user=, or for users familiar with smbfs it
>            accepts the longer form of the parameter username=. Similarly the longer smbfs
>            style parameter names may be accepted as synonyms for the shorter cifs
>            parameters pass=,dom= and cred=.
>     [...]
> 
> I had, for whatever reason, assumed that the user option rules would apply to the credentials file or that it would be backwards compatible with the older mount.smbfs credentials file format.  Are either of these assumptions correct?  If not, would it make sense to add or reword the manual page a bit (assuming I'm not the only one that misinterpreted it) for clarity?  I wouldn't mind drafting up a proposal if other felt it was worth the effort.
> 
> 
> Happy Version Numbers:
> from The Fine Manual page for mount.cifs(8)
>         VERSION
>            This man page is correct for version 1.52 of the cifs vfs filesystem (roughly Linux kernel 2.6.24).
> [1005 12:24 sun ~]#smbd -V
> Version 3.0.33-3.7.el5
> [1007 12:26 sun ~]#uname -a
> Linux sanitized.network.tld 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5.centos.plusxen #1 SMP Wed Dec 17 11:22:13 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>     
> Consistency here would probably be a good thing. A proposal for
> cleaning it up would be welcome. Patches would be even better.
> 
>    The weekend slipped away from me (they all seem to do that lately...); I'm going to take a look at this tonight after work.
> 
> Would you agree that it is more desirable to add the "user=" format to mount.cifs to maintain backwards compatibility?  I think this is probably the most 'clean' way to deal with it.


I agree that it would be good to have cifs be option-compatible with
smbfs. Not sure when we'll get to this however. It would probably be
best to file a bug at:

http://bugzilla.samba.org/

So we don't lose track of it.

Thanks,
-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton at samba.org>