Query re Samba and IPv6

[Steven French]

> Can you please tell me what the status of Samba is in a IPv6 network
running CIFS.
> A search in the Samba site reveals comments in patches that indicate it
will be
> added later, and one question in your 'mount' code.

I am mostly complete with the ipv6 enablement in the Linux cifs client code
(missing function is the routine to convert from what can be a somewhat
complex ipv6 text format for addresses into an in6_addr array, and missing
a few lines of code in the mount helper mount.cifs.c to call the
gethostbyname equivalent & formatting the ipv6 address into text form to
pass as a mount parm).   The impact on the client code is pretty small so I
do not expect major problems, just the normal difficulties finding time to
finish it with other harder issues that are high priority - would be happy
to evaluate a patch to finish it off though.    I think the amount of
coding to finish it off is only a few days, probably less, (on the client)
- and then perhaps a few more days to test it (it is a pretty low risk
change).   I had it in plan for this year, but it got pushed back due to
other high priority issues (krb5/SPNEGO enablement eg) - but would be
willing to take a decent patch to add the remaining few routines.

I expect (although have not proven this personally) that various servers
already support CIFS over ipv6, at least based on web searches.   I do not
believe that Samba has ipv6 support, but have not checked in the last weeks
- There was a patch for earlier version(s) of Samba server to add ipv6
support - and for the server the patch is a little difficult due to
portability issues - and the change from ipv4 vs. ipv6 addresses hit a bit
more code.  I don't know what the status/plans of this looks like for the
Samba 3 server - but it is possible that it would be easier to do in Samba
4 (I have not evaluated the server side for Samba 4).




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