Confused over CIFS

[NoOp]

On 01/12/2009 04:32 PM, Christopher Chan wrote:
>> Ummm... not sure who's right or wrong in all of this, but for what it's
>> worth here's what I've dug up:
>> 
> 
> Here is what I dug up:
> 
> The smbfs module still exists even in Hardy and Intrepid. Search for 
> smbfs.ko and you will find it present.

Well, you are correct there:
$ locate smbfs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.24-19-386/kernel/fs/smbfs/smbfs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/kernel/fs/smbfs/smbfs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.24-21-generic/kernel/fs/smbfs/smbfs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.24-22-generic/kernel/fs/smbfs/smbfs.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.24-23-generic/kernel/fs/smbfs/smbfs.ko

> 
> Starting with Gutsy, mount.smbfs became a wrapper for mount.cifs. That 
> is when people started getting burned using smbfs syntax in /etc/fstab.
> 
> So I am wrong in saying that only the cifs module is available for 
> Hardy. The smbfs module is still around. Just that the utility for using 
> smbfs is no longer available and has been replaced with a wrapper. I 
> think they should just rename the smbfs package to cifs since it really 
> has nothing to do with the smbfs module and also it won't lead to people 
> moving over to Ubuntu from distros that still have smbfs available 
> thinking that Ubuntu is broken because 'mount.smbfs' does not behave as 
> it should.
> 

To be quite honest, I don't know. However this might be an interesting read:

<http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2008-March/058341.html>

Note: I've not read the full thread, just stumbled across the link in
googling 'ubuntu +smbfs.ko'. I reckon further googling will probably
turn up the entire history/reasons.