smbmount and smbfs (was Re: smbmount et al...)

[Bill Hawes]

Michael H. Warfield wrote:

> > If you need to support both NT and Win 95 systems using the same kernel modules,
> > you need to _not_ specify the Win 95 kernel config option, but instead use the
> > mount time flags.
>
>         Ok...  That fits because, yes I did specify the Win95 bug workaround
> option.  You say to use the mount time flags.  Where does that fit in the
> smbmount syntax?  I noticed that the smbmount doc's are, shall we say, a bit
> weak.  Is this an additional option to the -c "mount /mountpoint ...." string
> or is it something that smbmount should be parsing (I would expect the later
> but would not be surprised by the former).  I don't find anything in
> particular in the smbmount command line parsing that would point a finger
> at what it is suppose to be.  The docs on the mount command basically
> say it's in smbmount's domain.  If it's suppose to be in smbmount that
> either means I'm overlooking it (real easy) or it's another one on my list
> to do...

Hi Mike,

The smbmnt man page describes the use of the -f argument to specifiy bug workarounds,
though probably it should just pull in the information from the smbfs.txt file rather
than referring to it. But at the time the kernel support was changing rapidly, so it
seemed better to do it this way.

The basic problem is that smbfs really needs to know which flavor of server it's talking
to, as the smb protocol level isn't sufficient. For example, for one of the smb messages
Win 95 swaps the order of timestamp fields, contrary to SMB docs _and_ Win NT practice.

Regards,
Bill