Re: [2.6 patch] remove smbfs

[Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 02:47:17AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > smbfs has the unfortunate quality of momentum. A lot of users aren't
> > aware of CIFS at all since smbfs basically does what they need it to
> > do. Some extra warning for those users would be nice.

> And many users will start whining loudly that the not deprecated driver 
> (in this case cifs) has this or that bug not before the patch to finally 
> remove the deprecated feature got applied or at least posted.

> And will demand that it therefore does not get removed.

We've had about 3 of these in Debian since deciding to cut it from the
upcoming release.  (The kicker for us was the samba security update that
wasn't tested with smbfs as a client.)  The key regressions of interest
relative to smbfs seem to be:

- lack of DFS support
- lack of netbios name resolution for UNC share names

The former seems to be a kernel issue whose resolution is in progress, and I
think the latter would have to be addressed in the userspace mount tools?

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org