Why a copy of smbd for each smbmount mountpoint?

[Frank R. Brown]

This raises the following question:

Under windows nt, a user on one machine can connect to shares
on a second machine using a different user's 'credentials'.
(User account or username/password pair.)

However, you can only connect to that machine using one set of
credentials at a time.

Is this a client-side restriction or server-side, or both?

Now for my question:  Can your OS/2 or Win9x client connect
to your (Linux) Samba with more than one set of credentials
simultaneously?  Maybe not --- only one smbd spawned.

Can your Linux smbmount client connect with multiple sets
of credentials?  Maybe --- multiple smbd's.

Just curious.  But being able to use multiple sets of credentials
offers valuable flexibility, and in my mind, not being able to do
so is a real lapse in nt.  (Among other things, it prevents nt
from being a true multi-user os.)  Maybe Samba helps fix this
problem.


"Steve Snyder" <swsnyder at home.com> wrote:

> When an OS/2 or Win9x client logs into a (Linux) Samba v2.0.6 server
> the running smbd spawns a copy of itself.  That second instance of
> smbd then handles all the shares for that client machine.
> 
> In contrast, a Linux client which does multiple smbmounts (also Samba
> v2.0.6) will cause the server to spawn a copy of smbd for *each*
> smbmount mountpoint.  This has the potential for using up a lot more
> memory on the server machine.
> 
> Is there any way to consolidate multiple smbmount shares such that 
> they are handled on the server by a single copy of smbd?

     Frank R.Brown
     Frank.R.Brown at MailAndNews