[linux-cifs-client] CIFS named pipe support

[Jeff Layton]

While I was at SambaXP this past spring, Kai Blin and I had a long talk
about the named pipe support in CIFS (the IPC$ stuff). 

Now, I'm not terribly well versed in the subtleties of how windows uses
IPC$ shares, but the points I took away from the discussion were:

1) windows can decide to talk to any server's IPC$ share at any time.
It doesn't require that the mount already be set up (though obviously,
you may need credentials).

2) the main consumer of this functionality should it ever materialize
will be WINE

Given this, I have to ask...what's the point in doing this with CIFS?
Wouldn't this functionality be better handled in userspace -- either
within WINE itself, or in a separate "cifsipc" daemon or something?

When I look at what we have in CIFS so far, I don't see it as a
good fit. In order to use the IPC$ share, you're going to have to have
something mount these filesystems on the fly as WINE needs them. Maybe
you can hack up autofs to do it, or maybe WINE can somehow trigger
these mounts.

The only real advantage would be that you *might* end up sharing
sockets between the IPC$ share and other mounts on the box, but even
that's not a given. It just seems like this solution is adding a lot
more moving parts than if WINE were to do this itself in userspace (or
through a daemon or something).

Is there something I'm missing here?
-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton at samba.org>