54 lines
2.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
54 lines
2.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
============
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Introduction
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============
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This is the client VFS module for the SMB3 NAS protocol as well
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as for older dialects such as the Common Internet File System (CIFS)
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protocol which was the successor to the Server Message Block
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(SMB) protocol, the native file sharing mechanism for most early
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PC operating systems. New and improved versions of CIFS are now
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called SMB2 and SMB3. Use of SMB3 (and later, including SMB3.1.1)
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is strongly preferred over using older dialects like CIFS due to
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security reaasons. All modern dialects, including the most recent,
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SMB3.1.1 are supported by the CIFS VFS module. The SMB3 protocol
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is implemented and supported by all major file servers
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such as all modern versions of Windows (including Windows 2016
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Server), as well as by Samba (which provides excellent
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CIFS/SMB2/SMB3 server support and tools for Linux and many other
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operating systems). Apple systems also support SMB3 well, as
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do most Network Attached Storage vendors, so this network
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filesystem client can mount to a wide variety of systems.
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It also supports mounting to the cloud (for example
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Microsoft Azure), including the necessary security features.
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The intent of this module is to provide the most advanced network
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file system function for SMB3 compliant servers, including advanced
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security features, excellent parallelized high performance i/o, better
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POSIX compliance, secure per-user session establishment, encryption,
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high performance safe distributed caching (leases/oplocks), optional packet
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signing, large files, Unicode support and other internationalization
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improvements. Since both Samba server and this filesystem client support
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the CIFS Unix extensions (and in the future SMB3 POSIX extensions),
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the combination can provide a reasonable alternative to other network and
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cluster file systems for fileserving in some Linux to Linux environments,
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not just in Linux to Windows (or Linux to Mac) environments.
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This filesystem has a mount utility (mount.cifs) and various user space
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tools (including smbinfo and setcifsacl) that can be obtained from
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https://git.samba.org/?p=cifs-utils.git
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or
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git://git.samba.org/cifs-utils.git
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mount.cifs should be installed in the directory with the other mount helpers.
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For more information on the module see the project wiki page at
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https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/LinuxCIFS
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and
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https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/LinuxCIFS_utils
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