Re: smb: more than broken?

Bill Hawes (whawes@star.net)
Sat, 20 Dec 1997 11:27:44 -0500


Robey Pointer wrote:

> In 2.1 currently, 'df' does not even show the mount point of an smb
> mount. :)

I'm not sure what problem you're having here, but df has always shown
the mount point of a smbfs mount on my system.

> It looks like nobody is currently maintaining the user-level SMB
> mounting tools (which explains why they're in the shape they are).
> After vacation, I'll try to hack them into a useful shape and post them
> on a web site. Time willing, I'll then start the gruesome job of
> mushing them back into one single mount utility.

If you had been following the kernel thread here on smbfs, you would
have seen the patches I released for smbclient to improve the handling
of reconnections.

> samba has made it clear that they will not support Linux's required
> patches to 'smbclient' so we need to pull out what we need and stick it
> back into 'smbmount'.

I've been corresponding with the Samba team on this topic, and they have
agreed to accept a smbfs mount patch for smbclient. The original
decision to use smbclient for mounting smbfs was made by Volker
Lendecke, one the the Samba team. Since the code for finding a server
and negotiating a connection is already required for smbclient, and most
people already have Samba, the decision makes sense from a maintenance
standpoint.

Having a smbclient binary capable of mounting smbfs should make it
easier to integrate smbfs mounting into the mount command.

Regards,
Bill