[Samba] smbfs and cifs

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 10:22 -0500, Josh Kelley wrote:
> I periodically see smbfs questions get asked on this list, and they
> usually get one of two responses:
> 
> 1. smbfs is a kernel module; this list is not the appropriate place to
> be asking smbfs questions.
> 2. You should be using cifs instead.
> 
> (Please let me know if either if these is incorrect.)
> 
> I was surprised to see, however, that the smbmount / mount.smbfs
> manpage makes no mention of cifs as being the recommended alternative,
> and it includes the following statement:
> 
> "The current maintainer of smbfs and the userspace tools smbmount, smbu-
> mount, and smbmnt is Urban Widmark. The SAMBA Mailing list is the  pre-
> ferred place to ask questions regarding these programs."
> 
> Out-of-date manpage?  Could it be updated to hopefully stave off some
> of the smbfs questions?
> 
> What's the best place to submit manpage updates like this?  Bugzilla,
> this mailing list, somewhere else?
> 
----
a very unofficial reply - perhaps someone else will amplify or fix my
response.

My understanding is that the smbfs kernel module currently has no
maintainer and there have been threats to drop it from the kernel
altogether but since it is widely used, they haven't endeavored to do
so.

cifs may or may not have been built and ready to use - depends upon your
distribution.

cifs doesn't have as many features as the smbfs which is probably the
reason that smbfs remains in the kernel.

the man page that I see on Fedora 3 and RHEL 4 for smbmount pretty much
tracks that which you have quoted. I would suspect that the man page
emanates from kernel.org but I haven't looked through their build
repositories.

Craig