Support Is Being Worked On For Root File-System Support Over SMB Protocol

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Support Is Being Worked On For Root File-System Support Over SMB Protocol

A Phoronix reader pointed out recent patches by a SUSE engineer working on support for mounting root file-systems over SMB (Samba)...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-SMB-CIFS-Root-File-System

[DrYak]

Serious question: is there any practical reason beyond the "Just for the Lulz!" tinkerer's justification ?

I would have expected most of the remote-root needs being covered by NFSv4 and Kerberos authentication...

[ThoreauHD]

I, for one, welcome our slow boot Overlords. Sounds like a hoot.

[milkylainen]

Serious question: is there any practical reason beyond the "Just for the Lulz!" tinkerer's justification ?

I would have expected most of the remote-root needs being covered by NFSv4 and Kerberos authentication...

I don't understand the objection. Of course there is practical reason behind the work?
There are a lot of Windows or Linux servers running CIFS and not NFS that can handle a diskless station system.

[andyprough]

I don't understand the objection. Of course there is practical reason behind the work?
There are a lot of Windows or Linux servers running CIFS and not NFS that can handle a diskless station system.

But -- can it run Crysis?

[tildearrow]

Wouldn't this cause permission issues? Windows and Linux have different permission systems, which can easily break the system.

[Slithery]

I don't understand the objection. Of course there is practical reason behind the work?
There are a lot of Windows or Linux servers running CIFS and not NFS that can handle a diskless station system.

For which the correct solution is to setup NFS, not try and work around SMB.

[jacob]

For which the correct solution is to setup NFS, not try and work around SMB.

NFS is such a trainwreck that I can't imagine any scenario in which using it would be the correct solution.

[oiaohm]

Wouldn't this cause permission issues? Windows and Linux have different permission systems, which can easily break the system.

Welcome to horrible. SMB was made by IBM for Unix systems. So samba can do permissions Linux wants.

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_a_Share_Using_POSIX_ACLs

But its coming very unsupported when running Samba4 active directory.

For which the correct solution is to setup NFS, not try and work around SMB.

NFS has it own set of problems like having issues when you need to use user id 0.

Lot of ways both SMB and NFS are both borked up for doing remote providing of root.

[jacob]

Welcome to horrible. SMB was made by IBM for Unix systems. So samba can do permissions Linux wants.

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_a_Share_Using_POSIX_ACLs

But its coming very unsupported when running Samba4 active directory.



NFS has it own set of problems like having issues when you need to use user id 0.

Lot of ways both SMB and NFS are both borked up for doing remote providing of root.

SMB has its own issues for sure, but in the real world its THE filesystem sharing protocol that everyone uses. Well except maybe some universities that still have networks of diskless Sun or HP Apollo workstations that have been installed in the 1980s and never updated since. From a purely practical PoV, I think that Linux should focus primarily on having a rock solid, world class support for SMB, both as client and as server, with feature complete support for root on SMB, authentication, ACLs and all the bells and whistles.