Client for Samba networks

[Steven French]

On the recently discussed of creating Windows client filesystem drivers
(IFSs) for important network filesystems -  I wish it were more practical
because it would help.   But if the interface were not hard enough to write
to then the practical requirement for using the expensive IFS kit would
make it even worse.     Perhaps it is worth considering a smaller goal - an
open replacement for the logon and "network neighborhood" function on NT -
while leaving the rest (the IFS driver) in place.   Getting an open network
provider DLL and/or GINA (logon module) for CIFS on Windows 2000/XP would
be a big help but also tricky to write (IBM's old SMB GINA for Windows
NT/2000 would not be a good starting point to use for this purpose
unfortunately).   A skeletal network provider DLL can be pretty small and
might be the easiest place to start - but who knows what has changed in XP
(we know the GINA interface changed slightly for XP because it broke our
IBM SMB logon one).

We, IBM, did have IFSs (e.g. for DFS) for NT but they were very difficult
to keep working release to release.   The O'Reilly book on NT Filesystems
was written by one of the authors of that code but this book is already
pretty dated.

Steve French
Senior Software Engineer
Linux Technology Center - IBM Austin
phone: 512-838-2294
email: sfrench at us.ibm.com