Updated CIFSD In-Kernel SMB3 File Sharing Server Patches Published

The Samsung-led CIFSD as an in-kernel SMB3 file-sharing server continues on its trajectory toward the mainline Linux kernel.

CIFSD is an in-kernel CIFS/SMB3 server designed for running within the kernel to deliver greater I/O performance and make better use of modern technologies around RDMA and encryption. CIFSD made it into Linux-Next last month for testing while being considered experimental and this week Samsung published the latest version of this kernel code.

With v2 of the CIFSD kernel server there are a lot of fixes in place, a lot of code has been cleaned up, and other low-level improvements made.

These newest CIFSD patches, which amount to around 32k lines of new kernel code in total, can be found on the Linux kernel mailing list. That patch cover letter also has more details on this in-kernel server design for those interested.

These latest CIFSD patches are likely too close for potentially seeing it mainlined with the imminent Linux 5.13 cycle start but we'll keep monitoring to see what comes of this Samsung project in the months ahead.