smbfs and smbpasswd file

[tridge at linuxcare.com]

One problem with smbfs is that you need to provide a password. This
means passwords in /etc/fstab or scripts. Not good.

What I realised recently is that we already have a place where we
store passwords and that sysadmins know to keep secure - the smbpasswd
file. smbmount could look for a matching username in the smbpasswd
file and use the hashed password from that to login to encrypted
servers (obviously no good if the server is not encrypted).

Comments on this? I'm inclined to make this the default with a switch
to turn it off. It would be tried like this:

1) if a password is supplied then use it
2) if that fails try the password from the smbpasswd file
3) if that fails prompt for a password

of course, the password in the smbpasswd file and on the remote system
may not match, but from experience I know they often do. Note that
using the smbpasswd password doesn't directly reveal it as it is
hashed by a (server chosen) key.

Cheers, Tridge