[PATCH] mount.cifs.8: add section to clarify delimiter usage with mount.cifs

Jeff Layton jlayton at redhat.com
Mon Mar 10 19:54:37 GMT 2008


This patch adds a section to the mount.cifs manpage to clarify how
mount.cifs treats delimiters and when it autoconverts them from one
type to another. It also has it state that the use of forward slash
as a delimiter is preferred and why.

Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton <jlayton at redhat.com>

Index: manpages-3/mount.cifs.8.xml
===================================================================
--- manpages-3/mount.cifs.8.xml	(revision 1251)
+++ manpages-3/mount.cifs.8.xml	(working copy)
@@ -499,6 +499,17 @@
 </refsect1>
 
 <refsect1>
+	<title>SERVICE FORMATTING AND DELIMITERS</title>
+
+	<para>
+		It's generally preferred to use forward slashes (/) as a delimiter in service names. They are considered to be the "universal delimiter" since they are generally not allowed to be embedded within path components on Windows machines and the client can convert them to blackslashes (\) unconditionally. Conversely, backslash characters are allowed by POSIX to be part of a path component, and can't be automatically converted in the same way.
+	</para>
+	<para>
+		mount.cifs will attempt to convert backslashes to forward slashes where it's able to do so, but it cannot do so in any path component following the sharename.
+	</para>
+</refsect1>
+
+<refsect1>
 	<title>ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES</title>
 
 	<para>


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