Re: [GIT PULL] cifs/smb3 client fixes

[Steve French]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 12:43 PM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 10:09 AM Steve French <smfrench@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >   So if you are ok with renaming the client dir and module
> > name - we can gradually stop using the word/name "cifs" except for the
> > parts of code which really are needed to access the (unfortunately
> > hundreds of millions of) very old devices which require SMB1 ("CIFS").
>
> I'm ok with directory renames, git handles it all well enough that the
> pain should be fairly minimal.
>
> I'd ask for that to be done during a fairly calm cycle, though, when
> there isn't a lot pending, so that any rename conflicts will be
> minimized.

Given likely movement of various common server/client functions into
cifs_common in the short term - we can delay renaming "fs/cifs"
(and fs/cifs_common) to e.g. "fs/smbfs" to 5.16 or 5.17


> > We could even build two versions of the module "smb3.ko" which does not
> > include support for the less secure legacy dialects and "cifs.ko" which does
> > include it.   Is there a precedent for something similar.
>
> I'm not sure there is precedent for that, but that's not a huge issue per se.

<snip>

> > Do you have any objections to me renaming the client's source
> > directory to "fs/smb3" (or fs/smb) and fs/smb3_common ...?
>
> So no objections to the rename per se, but can we please use a more
> specific name that is *not* tainted by history?
>
> I'll throw out two suggestions, but they are just that: (a) "smbfs" or
> (b) "smb-client".
>
> I think "smbfs" has the nice property of making it clear that this is
> just the filesystem part of the smb protocols - that otherwise cover a
> lot of other things too (at least historically printers, although I
> have no idea how true that is any more).

"smbfs" would likely be fine and I can bounce the idea around
others on Samba team etc.  And yes you are right, the broader
"SMB family of protocols" covers a lot of other functions
(from systems management, DCE/RPC, clustering, change notification,
named pipes, global name space ... not just files and printers) so "smbfs"
as a name for the client fs module going forward may be a bit less confusing.

> So if we rename, we should rename it to something new and slightly
> more specific than what we used to have.
>
> I'd rather have a module called "smbfs.ko" (or "smb-fs.ko" or
> "smb-client.ko" etc) than "smb.ko".

That should be easy enough (IIRC FreeBSD called their
module "smbfs), but presumably wait until 5.16 or 5.17
to lessen merge conflicts etc.


-- 
Thanks,

Steve