Linux kernel 2.6 smbfs bugs

[Christopher R. Hertel]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 12:35:59PM -0600, Steven French wrote:
:
> > I think that Mike was thinking about issues with the NBT layer,
> I had also assumed the requirement to add support for simple NBT name
> resolution (not just the additional backlevel cifs infolevels needed to
> access NT4 and Win9x servers.  As Mike seems to be saying it would be easy
> to fix (a few days work at most to get the basics working).

I already have some code (in C), if you're interested.  I wrote a little
tool for myself that's turned out to be quite useful.

> > I'd love to have a proper NBT layer that could
> > be used by third-party programs to
> > register/deregister names, offer
> > additional services, etc.
> 
> Interesting idea.   Do you want ioctls to "add" rfc1001 names?

Along those lines.  A few folks have asked about building something along 
the lines of the NetBIOS API.  Provide all of the NetBIOS functions (in 
some easy-to-use form) so that software could be written to interact with 
older NetBIOS clients and servers (beyond just SMB).

> I was
> assuming that this would simply be a mount option (there already is such a
> parm recognized by the cifs vfs kernel code but not used yet).    windows
> and a few other OSs apparently keep the list of netbios names in kernel for
> use by the user space Netbios API, but I didn't think Linux apps would like
> that approach.

As I understand it, NetBIOS itself (and any underlying transport) is 
handled in the kernel in these systems.  The API provides a means of 
talking to the NetBIOS layer.

The problem with using this architecture on a Linux system is that Samba 
assumes that it has control over NBT, so you'd have to run nmbd and have 
the CIFS VFS call out of the kernel to the daemon.

Not optimal.  The right way to do the NBT layer is in the kernel, I'm 
'fraid.  I don't see that happening, of course.  It's the right way to do 
NBT but it's not right for the system, for a variety of reasons.

Chris -)-----

--
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh at ubiqx.org