Re: SMBFS package vs kernel modules?

Mark Fletcher wrote:
DUH -- question is about smbfs package not
smbclient...

Hi list

I have a question about the smbclient package. What
does it provide that isn't provided by SMB FS support
in the kernel?

I currently run a 2.6.15.4 kernel and am about to
build myself a 2.6.17.7 kernel from kernel.org (using
make-kpkg). I plan shortly to buy myself some NAS and
use it with both Debian and WinXP. I'm assuming at
this point that I'll be buying a NAS solution that
uses SMB.

Everything else other than the kernel on my system is
from the sarge distribution. I may go to testing in
the near future but haven't decided to.

My question is this: given that the recent kernels
have SMB FS support available in them, what is the
purpose of the Debian smbfs package? Is this a
question of distro-clash ie is this something that
used to be needed but isn't needed on the most
up-to-the-minute kernels? Or is smbfs providing
something that the kernel doesn't?

Thanks

Mark

Running unstable (Sid) here.

I was using smbfs (a separate package from samba in Debian but same version number as the samba package and depends on samba-common) until recently.

Advantages of [u]mount.smbfs:

Once smbd / nmbd had started, one could mount shares from other machines that did not have fixed IP addresses.

Disadvantages of [u]mount.smbfs:

Support and documentation for Unicode is a bit fiddly, mounts are not available until smbd / nmbd have started, so entries in /etc/fstab will fail on bootup, then succeed with another mount entered manually.

Now I am running cifs ([u]mount.cifs is part of the smbfs package).

Advantages of [u]mount.cifs:

Mounts are available at the same time as NFS mounts and can happen automatically at boot-up and doesn't require smbd / nmbd (although I believe that smb.conf may be used?).

Unicode support is good, and cifs is still being actively developed.

Disadvantages of [u]mount.cifs:

It requires a kernel with cifs support.

The UNC name has to resolve to an IP address when the mount.cifs call is made. This shouldn't be a problem as servers should have a fixed IP address but it is a problem when mounting shares from Windows machines which have dynamic IP addresses assigned by DHCP. I had to assign a fixed IP address for a WindowsXP machine in the DHCP configuration of the ADSL router here to mount the shares from that WindowsXP machine.

See http://www.samba.org for more details

smbfs is required for mounting shares on OS/2 servers.

Hope this helps.

Arthur.


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