[Samba] Can I update our CIFS kernel module to support SMB 2.1/3 in RHEL/CentOS 6.x?

[Anoop C S]

On Mon, 2017-07-24 at 14:01 -0400, DW LNDeveloper via samba wrote:
> Hi,
> At my company we run server farms based on RHEL/CentOS 6.x and are nowhere near our EOL on those
> servers yet.  So upgrading them to run RHEL/CentOS 7 in order to gain SMB 2/3 support (since SMB 1
> has recently been disabled) is a difficult path for us to take at the present time.
>  
> Is it possible to acquire an updated cifs.ko kernel driver that supports SMB 2.1+ or 3 and install
> and use that module with our existing RHEL/CentOS 6.x server installations?

I would say NO. Because linux CIFS kernel module is also dependent on the kernel itself. For
example, some of the debugging infrastructure is built into the module based on what is currently
available with the kernel. So merely replacing an old cifs.ko with a new one might end up in
unexpected behaviours unless you are very sure about the changes that comes with the new version of
the module.


Anoop C S.