I’ve always used smbmount (or mount.smbfs) when I need to mount a shared Windows folder, but when I tried it today, no luck:
mount: unknown filesystem type ‘smbfs’
Figured I just needed to install the package, but YaST came up empty. Searching on the web, I find that SMB file system support is not compiled into openSUSE 10.2 and that people are using cifs (Common Internet Filesystem) instead. I tried it and it worked, but some people aren’t happy about the removal of smbfs.
mount -t cifs -o username=uuu,password=ppp //winHost/Shared\ Docs /mnt
The mount seems to work just like the smbfs mount. A cursory search turned up no reason why smbfs support was removed by openSUSE. Anyone know the reason?
Update: Upon receiving Nick’s comment (thanks, Nick), I searched for more details and discovered the Linux CIFS Client Guide on the Samba web site. It describes the differences between the Linux smbfs and cifs file system drivers, and continues with an in-depth discussion of cifs driver usage and optimization.
I think it’s changed because microsoft changed the name from smb to cifs. So it was changed to avoid confusion.
Link | May 24th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Linuxuser LigLog » Samba “smb” is uit, Cifs is in wrote:
[…] leerde me dat de naam van (het protocol) smb veranderd is in cifs “Common Internet […]
Link | August 24th, 2007 at 2:04 am
big thanks this comment 😉 3 hours was find why smbfs doesn’t work 😉
Link | January 27th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
“So it was changed to avoid confusion.” Also to help avoid any confusion was installing either a cifs wrapper named “smb” or a tiny script a la:
#!/bin/bash
echo “you probably want to use cifs instead”
wasting hours and hours of people’s time. I wish people thought a little bit before tossing out things other people use.
Link | April 6th, 2010 at 9:09 am