[Samba] smbmount deprecated - what about Windows 9x?

[Günter Kukkukk]

Am Montag, 12. Mai 2008 schrieb Helmut Hullen:
> Hallo,
> 
> I've just installed Kernel 2.6.25.2 - works fine.
> 
> But now when I use "smbmount" for mounting shares from my Win9x clients  
> the system (kernel) tells me
> 
>   smbfs is deprecated and will be removed from the 2.6.27 kernel. Please  
> migrate to cifs.
> 
> But at least Win9x seems not to like cifs. Mounting via smbfs works  
> since years, mounting (with the same options) via cifs produces several  
> error messages. The ugliest is
> 
>         no such file or directory
> 
> and "strace" shows that mount.cifs (or some subroutine) doesn't accept  
> the share. It finds the other server ...
> 
> Can I use "smbmount" even with kernel 2.6.27 (or newer)? May be cifs is  
> better, but I need to mount Win9x shares.
> 
> Viele Gruesse!
> Helmut

Hi Helmut,

you can use cifs vfs to mount win9x shares, but need to add
the following to the mount options:
  servernetbiosname=W9XSERVER
or the shorter form
  servern=W9XSERVER
where "W9XSERVER" is the upper case netbios name of the legacy 
server.
Legacy servers like OS/2 in addition need the option
  sec=lanman

Example:
mount -t cifs //server/SHARE /mount/point -o credentials=/root/sec/.creds, \
servern=MYWIN98,dir_mode=0755,file_mode=0764,uid=test,gid=users  ...

Also have a look at 'man mount.cifs' about the meaning of
  - dir_mode
  - file_mode
  - uid
  - gid
  - .......
when the server is not supporting the unix extensions.

Also note that uppercasing the share name (i.e. //server/SHARE )
will avoid a duplicate treeconX call.

IMPORTANT NOTE!
When connecting to remote *legacy* servers like
 - win9x/me
 - OS/2
 - others
I strongly advise to *not* use current cifs vfs in a production
environment! Initial testing should only be done against
special test shares, which should not contain any valuable data!

There are glitches with readonly files and the time stamps of
directories/files - and possibly more...
The cifs vfs developers are aware of this and are working on fixes.

Everyone is invited to work with the developers to fix remaining 
legacy problems. Testing and reporting of bugs is very much 
appreciated :-)

The main mailing list for the linux cifs client vfs is
   linux-cifs-client at lists.samba.org
Send bug reports to
   https://bugzilla.samba.org/  and choose the product "CifsVFS"

These days lots of support talks are also happening on IRC.
Samba/cifs related talks are done on irc.freenode.net in channels
  #samba           (user related)
  #samba-technical (development only!)

My irc nickname is "kukks" and you can also reach me via email
at kukks at samba.org.

Cheers, Günter