| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | This is the client VFS module for the Common Internet File System |
| 2 | (CIFS) protocol which is the successor to the Server Message Block |
| 3 | (SMB) protocol, the native file sharing mechanism for most early |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 4 | PC operating systems. New and improved versions of CIFS are now |
| 5 | called SMB2 and SMB3. These dialects are also supported by the |
| 6 | CIFS VFS module. CIFS is fully supported by network |
| 7 | file servers such as Windows 2000, 2003, 2008 and 2012 |
| 8 | as well by Samba (which provides excellent CIFS |
| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 9 | server support for Linux and many other operating systems), so |
| 10 | this network filesystem client can mount to a wide variety of |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 11 | servers. |
| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 12 | |
| 13 | The intent of this module is to provide the most advanced network |
| 14 | file system function for CIFS compliant servers, including better |
| 15 | POSIX compliance, secure per-user session establishment, high |
| 16 | performance safe distributed caching (oplock), optional packet |
| 17 | signing, large files, Unicode support and other internationalization |
| 18 | improvements. Since both Samba server and this filesystem client support |
| 19 | the CIFS Unix extensions, the combination can provide a reasonable |
| 20 | alternative to NFSv4 for fileserving in some Linux to Linux environments, |
| 21 | not just in Linux to Windows environments. |
| 22 | |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 23 | This filesystem has an mount utility (mount.cifs) that can be obtained from |
| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 24 | |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 25 | https://ftp.samba.org/pub/linux-cifs/cifs-utils/ |
| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 26 | |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 27 | It must be installed in the directory with the other mount helpers. |
| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 28 | |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 29 | For more information on the module see the project wiki page at |
| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 30 | |
| Björn Jacke | 81b6622 | 2013-09-10 10:28:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 31 | https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/LinuxCIFS_utils |