1f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab============ 2f139291cSMauro Carvalho ChehabIntroduction 3f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab============ 4f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 5f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab This is the client VFS module for the SMB3 NAS protocol as well 6f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab as for older dialects such as the Common Internet File System (CIFS) 7f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab protocol which was the successor to the Server Message Block 8f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab (SMB) protocol, the native file sharing mechanism for most early 9f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab PC operating systems. New and improved versions of CIFS are now 10*731ddc09SSteve French called SMB2 and SMB3. Use of SMB3 (and later, including SMB3.1.1 11*731ddc09SSteve French the most current dialect) is strongly preferred over using older 12*731ddc09SSteve French dialects like CIFS due to security reasons. All modern dialects, 13*731ddc09SSteve French including the most recent, SMB3.1.1, are supported by the CIFS VFS 14*731ddc09SSteve French module. The SMB3 protocol is implemented and supported by all major 15*731ddc09SSteve French file servers such as Windows (including Windows 2019 Server), as 16*731ddc09SSteve French well as by Samba (which provides excellent CIFS/SMB2/SMB3 server 17*731ddc09SSteve French support and tools for Linux and many other operating systems). 18*731ddc09SSteve French Apple systems also support SMB3 well, as do most Network Attached 19*731ddc09SSteve French Storage vendors, so this network filesystem client can mount to a 20*731ddc09SSteve French wide variety of systems. It also supports mounting to the cloud 21*731ddc09SSteve French (for example Microsoft Azure), including the necessary security 22*731ddc09SSteve French features. 23f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 24f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab The intent of this module is to provide the most advanced network 25f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab file system function for SMB3 compliant servers, including advanced 26f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab security features, excellent parallelized high performance i/o, better 27f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab POSIX compliance, secure per-user session establishment, encryption, 28f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab high performance safe distributed caching (leases/oplocks), optional packet 29f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab signing, large files, Unicode support and other internationalization 30*731ddc09SSteve French improvements. Since both Samba server and this filesystem client support the 31*731ddc09SSteve French CIFS Unix extensions, and the Linux client also suppors SMB3 POSIX extensions, 32f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab the combination can provide a reasonable alternative to other network and 33f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab cluster file systems for fileserving in some Linux to Linux environments, 34f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab not just in Linux to Windows (or Linux to Mac) environments. 35f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 36f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab This filesystem has a mount utility (mount.cifs) and various user space 37f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab tools (including smbinfo and setcifsacl) that can be obtained from 38f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 39f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab https://git.samba.org/?p=cifs-utils.git 40f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 41f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab or 42f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 43f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab git://git.samba.org/cifs-utils.git 44f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 45f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab mount.cifs should be installed in the directory with the other mount helpers. 46f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 47f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab For more information on the module see the project wiki page at 48f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 49f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/LinuxCIFS 50f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 51f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab and 52f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab 53f139291cSMauro Carvalho Chehab https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/LinuxCIFS_utils 54