Linux in-kernel CIFS client for attaching to Samba or Windows servers

headers Steven French | 3 Mar 2005 08:57

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>From my investigations, and searching the archives, it seems that smbfs can 
only mount shares, and not directories under the share

i.e.

smbmount //host/share /mnt		works
smbmount //host/share/directory /mnt	doesn't work

Our W2K3 server has user home directories in a tree where there are no user 
rights to the next node up the tree (level1), which is the directory on the 
share, 

i.e. //host/share/level1/user_home_directories

We need to directly mount //host/share/level1/user_home_directory on Linux 
clients, as we can do on 2000/XP clients.  Will linux_cifs give me that 
possibility?

Thanks

John Landamore

School of Mathematics & Computer Science
University of Leicester
University Road, LEICESTER, LE1 7RH
J.Landamore <at> mcs.le.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)116 2523410       Fax: +44 (0)116 2523604

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 03:13:36PM +0000, J. A. Landamore wrote:
> >From my investigations, and searching the archives, it seems that smbfs can 
> only mount shares, and not directories under the share
> 
> i.e.
> 
> smbmount //host/share /mnt		works
> smbmount //host/share/directory /mnt	doesn't work

Yes.  That's because the protocol itself wasn't really designed to do what 
you're trying to do.

On the other hand, I just tried it and I can indeed mount a subdirectory
of a share under W2K.  I'll need to do a packet capture later on see
what's going on here.

The server in my little test was Samba, and I don't recall that we had to
do anything to specifically support this, so my guess (without looking at
captures) is that W2K is actually doing a tree connect to the share itself
and then mapping the drive letter to the subdirectory (sort of like the
old 'subst' command).

It's possible that the entire UNC path (including the subdirectory name)
is being provided in the TreeConnect...  I'd have to take a look.

Steve:  Any insight?

Chris -)-----

--

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh <at> ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh <at> ubiqx.org

IIRC, a "new" feature in Win2k was something called "reparse
points" which allow one folder in one filesystem to be made
available at another tree location in another. i.e. UNIX-style
mounts.

The ability to mount a subfolder of a share was also first
seen in win2k, so I wouldn't be surprised if what you describe
is indeed the underlying mechanism.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Christopher R. Hertel [SMTP:crh <at> ubiqx.mn.org]
> 
> The server in my little test was Samba, and I don't recall that we had to
> do anything to specifically support this, so my guess (without looking at
> captures) is that W2K is actually doing a tree connect to the share itself
> and then mapping the drive letter to the subdirectory (sort of like the
> old 'subst' command).
> 
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Kinda off-topic, but I figure it would be a good place to ask. Does 
anyone know if there is developement on CIFS clients for OSX?

I have found two commercial solutions [1], which I might go with 
eventually. I am wondering if there is a truly open source alternative 
somewhere?

TTimo

[1] http://www.thursby.com/ and http://www.obdev.at/sharity/

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 01:22:33PM -0600, Timothee Besset wrote:
> Kinda off-topic, but I figure it would be a good place to ask. Does 
> anyone know if there is developement on CIFS clients for OSX?
> 
> I have found two commercial solutions [1], which I might go with 
> eventually. I am wondering if there is a truly open source alternative 
> somewhere?

OSX contains a *native* CIFS client. Apple work on and maintain
this code (plus I believe they release it in Darwin).

They've gone over to the dark side though in that their shiny
new *BSD kernel is getting ever more Windows like in features
and less and less friendly to POSIX apps .

Jeremy.

Well I think are mistaken. And it's quite surprising for someone with an 
   <at> samba.org email address. They have an smbfs client, but they don't 
have a cifs client ( unless it's in the next release of OSX - Tiger - 
which I didn't get my hands on yet ).

I need working file locking semantics, which only a CIFS client gives me..

TTimo

Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 01:22:33PM -0600, Timothee Besset wrote:
> 
>>Kinda off-topic, but I figure it would be a good place to ask. Does 
>>anyone know if there is developement on CIFS clients for OSX?
>>
>>I have found two commercial solutions [1], which I might go with 
>>eventually. I am wondering if there is a truly open source alternative 
>>somewhere?
> 
> 
> OSX contains a *native* CIFS client. Apple work on and maintain
> this code (plus I believe they release it in Darwin).
> 
> They've gone over to the dark side though in that their shiny
> new *BSD kernel is getting ever more Windows like in features
> and less and less friendly to POSIX apps .
> 
> Jeremy.
> 

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 01:32:32PM -0600, Timothee Besset wrote:
> Well I think are mistaken. And it's quite surprising for someone with an 
>   <at> samba.org email address. They have an smbfs client, but they don't 
> have a cifs client ( unless it's in the next release of OSX - Tiger - 
> which I didn't get my hands on yet ).

SMB and CIFS are the same protocol. You're mistaken, not I . I've spent
the week working with Conrad from Apple (the code maintainter of their
CIFS client) here at Connectathon. So I wouldn't quibble about
naming semantics with me . SMB == CIFS - remember that.

> I need working file locking semantics, which only a CIFS client gives me..

Exactly *what* locking semantics do you need ? This is funny as
Steve Conrad and I have spent the week discussing how to add
POSIX locking semantics into the UNIX extensions. Conrad is
waiting on the POSIX locking code going into Samba3 to be able
to provide the correct locking semantics to apps.

Jeremy.

>>>>> "J" == J A Landamore <jal <at> mcs.le.ac.uk> writes:

    >> From my investigations, and searching the archives, it seems
    >> that smbfs can
    J> only mount shares, and not directories under the share

    J> i.e.

    J> smbmount //host/share /mnt works smbmount
    J> //host/share/directory /mnt doesn't work

MS call this "Deep Mapping".

    J> Our W2K3 server has user home directories in a tree where there
    J> are no user rights to the next node up the tree (level1), which
    J> is the directory on the share,

    J> i.e. //host/share/level1/user_home_directories

We've used to have that situation and had to give it up, so now
inheritance is blocked at the user's home directory and their rights
explicitly put on it again.  Messy.

    J> We need to directly mount
    J> //host/share/level1/user_home_directory on Linux clients, as we
    J> can do on 2000/XP clients.  Will linux_cifs give me that
    J> possibility?

MacOS can't do it either.  However, a possible server and client side
workaround could be to allow "traverse folder" rights on the folder
that's shared, and then do a "mount -o bind" on the client side to
where you want the real home directory to appear.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Kenny.

--

-- 
Desktop Services Team, EUCS.

University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 01:32:32PM -0600, Timothee Besset wrote:
> Well I think are mistaken. And it's quite surprising for someone with an 
>  <at> samba.org email address. They have an smbfs client, but they don't 
> have a cifs client ( unless it's in the next release of OSX - Tiger - 
> which I didn't get my hands on yet ).

Need a little more in-depth research here, methinks.

CIFS is just a new name for the Microsoft filesharing protocol suite.  
The CIFS name was introduced in the mid/late '90s when Microsoft was
worried about Sun's WebNFS.  CIFS is just SMB or, to some folks, SMB and
it's entourage.  See:

  http://ubiqx.org/cifs/Intro.html#INTRO.2

> I need working file locking semantics, which only a CIFS client gives me..

You'll get the intersection of what the client and server support.

Apple's CIFS client software is based on the FreeBSD SMBFS by Boris Popov
(and is not related to the Linux SMBFS except that Boris spent some time
reading existing code).  The folks at Apple who work on that code know
what they're doing, but they set priorities based on business needs.  If
you need a feature that's not yet implemented your best bet is either to
add it to the Open Source FreeBSD/Darwin SMBFS and hope they'll adopt it,
or to request it through Apple.  Maybe both.

I'm not sure if it's possible to use the FreeBSD/Darwin SMBFS code in 
place of the Apple code on the Mac.

Chris -)-----

--

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh <at> ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh <at> ubiqx.org

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patch to update RHEL4 cifs to cifs 1.29

Mounting directories below share level

Re: Mounting directories below share level

RE: Mounting directories below share level

osx-cifs-client ?

Re: osx-cifs-client ?

Re: osx-cifs-client ?

Re: osx-cifs-client ?

Re: Mounting directories below share level

Re: osx-cifs-client ?