[Samba] smbmount

[Felix Miata]

On 2007/05/07 13:46 (GMT+0100) John G Walker apparently typed:

> On Thu, 03 May 2007 18:24:19 -0400 Felix Miata <mrmazda at ij.net> wrote:

>> SUSE wants you to use cifs instead of smbfs,

> So why is SuSE (or Novell) telling me what I should or shouldn't use?
> In any case, this is a bout the world I live in, not about their or my
> preferences.

I think SUSE is saying the same thing as other distros. They prefer to give
you maintained but dysfunctional CIFS over functional but unmaintained
networking support. NAICT, the kernel developers are the root of the
problem, not Novell.

> As far as I understand it, Windows 98 doesn't use CIFS. Since the
> object of using Samba is partly to access a Windows 98 machine, not
> having SMBFS available sort of defeats the object of using Samba in the
> first place. Maybe they want us to go back to using floppy disks as
> substitutes for a network.

CIFS is supposed to replace SMBFS. It simply doesn't work right with W98 in
the version supplied by SUSE. AFAIK, it still doesn't work right in newer
versions either.

> If there is a way to network files to and from a Windows 98 machine via
> CIFS, by the way, please let me know, since this would solve my problem.

There isn't AFAIK.

This isn't directly related, but I think it's indirectly related in a major
way. W98 is so horribly insecure that developers don't want to mess with it,
which means testing CIFS with it is a logistical problem. The implication
here is people still using W98 should find a way to not use it any more,
either upgrading to a newer version of doz if possible, or replacing W98
with Linux, and using W98 in a virtual machine if necessary if not using W98
is not an option.

>> but if you can't get
>> cifs to work right, you can recompile the kernel to enable smbfs. I
>> don't remember exactly the details of getting smbmount back, so I
>> asked on freenode 

> Thanks very much. This is over and above the call of duty and well
> appreciated.

Not sure what you mean, but compiling a kernel on SUSE really isn't that big
a deal. It's a big space and CPU/IO time consumer, but the mental effort
required is relatively small.

> In fact I have downloaded the Samba client - and have now upgraded Samba
> to version 3.0.24, just in case it was a version problem. Samba client
> informs me (in YaST) that it installs smbmount, but no such luck when
> I try it out. smbmount is just not found.

> When I look in /sbin there is no mount.smbfs, only mount.cifs. That
> would seem to be the main problem. So how do I get this installed if not
> by installing samba-client?

Try asking on the main SUSE list for SUSE-specific help:
opensuse+subscribe at opensuse.org

I don't remember how I did it, which is why I asked on IRC before my
previous reply.
-- 
"The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining
ever brighter till the full light of day."	Proverbs 4:18 NIV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/