[OpenIndiana-discuss] CIFS and openindiana

[Laurent Blume]

On 2013-07-11 6:56 PM, James Carlson wrote:
> I've been using it for a while, first on OpenSolaris.

Yes, me too, on and off until S11.1, when I dumped it for good because
it annoyed me one time too many. I do know the thing :-)

> Simple: integration with ZFS.  That's the killer feature for me, because
> it makes the CIFS exports as easy to manage as my NFS exports.

Okay, fair enough, it is a good feature. But that answer makes me wonder.

Look at this:

# net rpc share list
Enter root's password:
print$
IPC$

# zfs list
NAME    USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
lpool   460K   402G   136K  /lpool

# zfs create -o sharesmb=on lpool/test

# zfs list
NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
lpool        656K   402G   136K  /lpool
lpool/test   136K   402G   136K  /lpool/test

# net rpc share list
Enter root's password:
print$
IPC$
lpool_test

# uname -a
Linux wenjun 3.5.0-18-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Thu Oct 25 07:26:14 UTC
2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

It's just something that can already be done equally well with Samba.
This community should keep an eye on the outside world, things are
moving there too.

Right now, I can't think of anything that the OI CIFS server can do,
that Samba cannot.
So we should not believe in past Sun/Oracle propaganda that only the
magic of a kernelized server could do those things, ot fall prey to the
NIH syndrom.

> I think that kind of pessimistic question could apply to anything in
> OpenIndiana.  Why bother with the kernel itself ... ?

Well, yes, it can apply to many things. And OI at this point is not able
to compete on all fronts. So insisting on holding them all together at
arms' length sounds dangerously unfeasible to me.

There are some which are more immediately of concerns than others,
choices should be made according to the features needed.
That project should learn to build on and integrate with other OSS
projects. All Linux distros have learnt to do that.
Is this Community becoming a closed one, where nothing good can be
accepted from outside, even when it would provide some welcome relief?

> It works for me.  I used to use Samba, but I had many problems with it,
> and I'm really not at all interested in "developing" anything for it.

Developing what? It's already here. You would be developing something
else :-)
I'm not sure when you last used Samba, but believe me, it's going
forward at a pace that OI cannot realistically match.

> The sole purpose to me is to support a couple of ugly legacy Windoze
> systems, and the less time I spend thinking about it, the better.

So if you don't really care about serving CIFS, it wouldn't really
matter to you that they'd come through Samba or anything else?

> I don't doubt that a Samba developer would feel quite differently.  Your
> opinion is valid, but it just doesn't apply to me.  :-/

I have no idea how they feel, but I'm sure it'd be better to have them
involved and aware of OI rather than not.

Laurent