[Samba] Automount from Windows w/o logging in first?

[Malcolm Baldridge]

> let's stay on the list.

No worries.
 
> DFS is windows version of nfs exports/mounts

I got that far... but... but... looking at the M$ doccos for DFS, I don't
see where "clients" of the DFS servers are setup.
 
> Samba 3 supports dfs. I don't think 2.2.x does.
> 
> Microsoft offers Services for Unix for free - you can mount nfs shares
> on Windows.

Hrm.... I'd prefer to mount SMB shares, because my experience with Windows
mounting NFS isn't entirely pleasant.  I don't think locking is consistently
designed or implemented.  I remember alot of headache with this the last
time I tried using NFS under Windows NT.
 
> Windows share mounts in user space don't work because someone has to log
> in to Windows machine - it's something that has to run as a service as
> you have discovered.

Hrm.  Surely I can't be the first person to want to serve IIS pages out of a
network share?!

> In my mind it's either nfs mounts or dfs or you have to 're-think' your
> options (i.e. rsync files on each windows server from 'master')

rsync, blech.  Are there good rsync implementations for Windows?

OK, then, I'll bite.  Just how DO load-balanced webservers serve up content
from a central content repository?  I can't believe people rely on
out-of-band file/directory sync tools.  It seems like having a "system
mounted" share which is activated at service start time prior to the
invocation of IIS would be a straight-forward matter.

What do servers which rely on SANs for centralised storage make use of? 
Surely not "normal" SMB, then.

If these were UNIX webservers, yes, NFS would be the natural choice.

=MB=