[ILUG] automounting smb shares

[Niall O Broin]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 11:13:08PM +0000, Steve Fewer wrote:

> lo all, im setting up a linux network (using Red Hat 6) and need to
> integrate it with a current nt domain. the idea is to automount user shares
> on the nt server to the linux server and export those mount points to
> authorised users when they log on through NIS/NFS (everythings to be done
> dynamically/on-the-fly). There is no problem mounting smb filesystems with a
> straightforward mount command but there is a problem when trying to get
> autofs to mount smb shares. it says it needs mount v6(which is odd), anybody
> any ideas or experience with something similar. cheers

I haven't tried this with Linux' nfsd so perhaps I'm only spreading false
despondency here, but other NFS servers I've used will not do this i.e. they
will only serve local filesystem to NFS clients.

Given that Reiser FS had problems with nfsd and that those problems were
related to nfsd's use of inodes as unique and permanent numbers (AFAIR) I
would be afraid that I am not (spreading false despondency, that is) as nfsd
sure as shooting won't be able to get inode numbers on an SMB mounted
filesystem. So before you kill yourself trying to get autofs working with
SMB shares, first check if nfsd will export an SMB mounted share.

I've just remembered another reason why this won't work - NFS clients expect
NFS filesystems to obey certain Unix semantics. Among those is that they
will expect to be able to make symbolic links. This you cannot do on an SMB
mounted share as I know to my cost - I had to modify Postfix for a recent
project because of this.





Kindest regards, and sorry to be spreading despondency, 



Niall