1 The CIFS VFS support for Linux supports many advanced network filesystem
2 features such as heirarchical dfs like namespace, hardlinks, locking and more.
3 It was designed to comply with the SNIA CIFS Technical Reference (which
4 supersedes the 1992 X/Open SMB Standard) as well as to perform best practice
5 practical interoperability with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Samba and equivalent
8 For questions or bug reports please contact:
9 sfrench@samba.org (sfrench@us.ibm.com)
14 1) Get the kernel source (e.g.from http://www.kernel.org)
15 and download the cifs vfs source (see the project page
16 at http://us1.samba.org/samba/Linux_CIFS_client.html)
17 and change directory into the top of the kernel directory
18 then patch the kernel (e.g. "patch -p1 < cifs_24.patch")
19 to add the cifs vfs to your kernel configure options if
20 it has not already been added (e.g. current SuSE and UL
21 users do not need to apply the cifs_24.patch since the cifs vfs is
22 already in the kernel configure menu) and then
23 mkdir linux/fs/cifs and then copy the current cifs vfs files from
24 the cifs download to your kernel build directory e.g.
26 cp <cifs_download_dir>/fs/cifs/* to <kernel_download_dir>/fs/cifs
28 2) make menuconfig (or make xconfig)
29 3) select cifs from within the network filesystem choices
32 6) make modules (or "make" if CIFS VFS not to be built as a module)
35 1) Download the kernel (e.g. from http://www.kernel.org or from bitkeeper
36 at bk://linux.bkbits.net/linux-2.5) and change directory into the top
37 of the kernel directory tree (e.g. /usr/src/linux-2.5.73)
38 2) make menuconfig (or make xconfig)
39 3) select cifs from within the network filesystem choices
44 Installation instructions:
45 =========================
46 If you have built the CIFS vfs as module (successfully) simply
47 type "make modules_install" (or if you prefer, manually copy the file to
48 the modules directory e.g. /lib/modules/2.4.10-4GB/kernel/fs/cifs/cifs.o).
50 If you have built the CIFS vfs into the kernel itself, follow the instructions
51 for your distribution on how to install a new kernel (usually you
52 would simply type "make install").
54 If you do not have the utility mount.cifs (in the Samba 3.0 source tree and on
55 the CIFS VFS web site) copy it to the same directory in which mount.smbfs and
56 similar files reside (usually /sbin). Although the helper software is not
57 required, mount.cifs is recommended. Eventually the Samba 3.0 utility program
58 "net" may also be helpful since it may someday provide easier mount syntax for
59 users who are used to Windows e.g. net use <mount point> <UNC name or cifs URL>
60 Note that running the Winbind pam/nss module (logon service) on all of your
61 Linux clients is useful in mapping Uids and Gids consistently across the
62 domain to the proper network user. The mount.cifs mount helper can be
63 trivially built from Samba 3.0 or later source e.g. by executing:
65 gcc samba/source/client/mount.cifs.c -o mount.cifs
67 If cifs is built as a module, then the size and number of network buffers
68 and maximum number of simultaneous requests to one server can be configured.
69 Changing these from their defaults is not recommended. By executing modinfo
70 modinfo kernel/fs/cifs/cifs.ko
71 on kernel/fs/cifs/cifs.ko the list of configuration changes that can be made
72 at module initialization time (by running insmod cifs.ko) can be seen.
76 To permit users to mount and unmount over directories they own is possible
77 with the cifs vfs. A way to enable such mounting is to mark the mount.cifs
78 utility as suid (e.g. "chmod +s /sbin/mount.cifs). To enable users to
79 umount shares they mount requires
80 1) mount.cifs version 1.4 or later
81 2) an entry for the share in /etc/fstab indicating that a user may
83 //server/usersharename /mnt/username cifs user 0 0
85 Note that when the mount.cifs utility is run suid (allowing user mounts),
86 in order to reduce risks, the "nosuid" mount flag is passed in on mount to
87 disallow execution of an suid program mounted on the remote target.
88 When mount is executed as root, nosuid is not passed in by default,
89 and execution of suid programs on the remote target would be enabled
90 by default. This can be changed, as with nfs and other filesystems,
91 by simply specifying "nosuid" among the mount options. For user mounts
92 though to be able to pass the suid flag to mount requires rebuilding
93 mount.cifs with the following flag:
95 gcc samba/source/client/mount.cifs.c -DCIFS_ALLOW_USR_SUID -o mount.cifs
97 There is a corresponding manual page for cifs mounting in the Samba 3.0 and
98 later source tree in docs/manpages/mount.cifs.8
100 Allowing User Unmounts
101 ======================
102 To permit users to ummount directories that they have user mounted (see above),
103 the utility umount.cifs may be used. It may be invoked directly, or if
104 umount.cifs is placed in /sbin, umount -i can invoke the cifs umount helper
105 (at least for most versions of the umount utility) for umount of cifs
106 mounts. As with mount.cifs, to enable user unmounts umount.cifs must be marked
107 as suid (e.g. "chmod +s /sbin/umount.cifs"). For this utility to succeed
108 the target path must be a cifs mount, and the uid of the current user must
109 match the uid of the user who mounted the resource.
111 Also note that the customary way of allowing user mounts and unmounts is
112 (instead of using mount.cifs and unmount.cifs as suid) to add a line
113 to the file /etc/fstab for each //server/share you wish to mount, but
114 this can become unwieldy when potential mount targets include many
115 or unpredictable UNC names.
119 To get the maximum benefit from the CIFS VFS, we recommend using a server that
120 supports the SNIA CIFS Unix Extensions standard (e.g. Samba 2.2.5 or later or
121 Samba 3.0) but the CIFS vfs works fine with a wide variety of CIFS servers.
122 Note that uid, gid and file permissions will display default values if you do
123 not have a server that supports the Unix extensions for CIFS (such as Samba
124 2.2.5 or later). To enable the Unix CIFS Extensions in the Samba server, add
127 unix extensions = yes
129 to your smb.conf file on the server. Note that the following smb.conf settings
130 are also useful (on the Samba server) when the majority of clients are Unix or
134 delete readonly = yes
137 Note that server ea support is required for supporting xattrs from the Linux
138 cifs client, and that EA support is present in later versions of Samba (e.g.
139 3.0.6 and later (also EA support works in all versions of Windows, at least to
140 shares on NTFS filesystems). Extended Attribute (xattr) support is an optional
141 feature of most Linux filesystems which may require enabling via
142 make menuconfig. Client support for extended attributes (user xattr) can be
143 disabled on a per-mount basis by specifying "nouser_xattr" on mount.
145 The CIFS client can get and set POSIX ACLs (getfacl, setfacl) to Samba servers
146 version 3.10 and later. Setting POSIX ACLs requires enabling both XATTR and
147 then POSIX support in the CIFS configuration options when building the cifs
148 module. POSIX ACL support can be disabled on a per mount basic by specifying
151 Some administrators may want to change Samba's smb.conf "map archive" and
152 "create mask" parameters from the default. Unless the create mask is changed
153 newly created files can end up with an unnecessarily restrictive default mode,
154 which may not be what you want, although if the CIFS Unix extensions are
155 enabled on the server and client, subsequent setattr calls (e.g. chmod) can
156 fix the mode. Note that creating special devices (mknod) remotely
157 may require specifying a mkdev function to Samba if you are not using
158 Samba 3.0.6 or later. For more information on these see the manual pages
159 ("man smb.conf") on the Samba server system. Note that the cifs vfs,
160 unlike the smbfs vfs, does not read the smb.conf on the client system
161 (the few optional settings are passed in on mount via -o parameters instead).
162 Note that Samba 2.2.7 or later includes a fix that allows the CIFS VFS to delete
163 open files (required for strict POSIX compliance). Windows Servers already
164 supported this feature. Samba server does not allow symlinks that refer to files
165 outside of the share, so in Samba versions prior to 3.0.6, most symlinks to
166 files with absolute paths (ie beginning with slash) such as:
168 would be forbidden. Samba 3.0.6 server or later includes the ability to create
169 such symlinks safely by converting unsafe symlinks (ie symlinks to server
170 files that are outside of the share) to a samba specific format on the server
171 that is ignored by local server applications and non-cifs clients and that will
172 not be traversed by the Samba server). This is opaque to the Linux client
173 application using the cifs vfs. Absolute symlinks will work to Samba 3.0.5 or
174 later, but only for remote clients using the CIFS Unix extensions, and will
175 be invisbile to Windows clients and typically will not affect local
176 applications running on the same server as Samba.
180 Once the CIFS VFS support is built into the kernel or installed as a module
181 (cifs.o), you can use mount syntax like the following to access Samba or Windows
184 mount -t cifs //9.53.216.11/e$ /mnt -o user=myname,pass=mypassword
186 Before -o the option -v may be specified to make the mount.cifs
187 mount helper display the mount steps more verbosely.
188 After -o the following commonly used cifs vfs specific options
195 Other cifs mount options are described below. Use of TCP names (in addition to
196 ip addresses) is available if the mount helper (mount.cifs) is installed. If
197 you do not trust the server to which are mounted, or if you do not have
198 cifs signing enabled (and the physical network is insecure), consider use
199 of the standard mount options "noexec" and "nosuid" to reduce the risk of
200 running an altered binary on your local system (downloaded from a hostile server
201 or altered by a hostile router).
203 Although mounting using format corresponding to the CIFS URL specification is
204 not possible in mount.cifs yet, it is possible to use an alternate format
205 for the server and sharename (which is somewhat similar to NFS style mount
206 syntax) instead of the more widely used UNC format (i.e. \\server\share):
207 mount -t cifs tcp_name_of_server:share_name /mnt -o user=myname,pass=mypasswd
209 When using the mount helper mount.cifs, passwords may be specified via alternate
210 mechanisms, instead of specifying it after -o using the normal "pass=" syntax
212 1) By including it in a credential file. Specify credentials=filename as one
213 of the mount options. Credential files contain two lines
215 password=your_password
216 2) By specifying the password in the PASSWD environment variable (similarly
217 the user name can be taken from the USER environment variable).
218 3) By specifying the password in a file by name via PASSWD_FILE
219 4) By specifying the password in a file by file descriptor via PASSWD_FD
221 If no password is provided, mount.cifs will prompt for password entry
225 Servers must support the NTLM SMB dialect (which is the most recent, supported
226 by Samba and Windows NT version 4, 2000 and XP and many other SMB/CIFS servers)
227 Servers must support either "pure-TCP" (port 445 TCP/IP CIFS connections) or RFC
228 1001/1002 support for "Netbios-Over-TCP/IP." Neither of these is likely to be a
229 problem as most servers support this. IPv6 support is planned for the future,
230 and is almost complete.
232 Valid filenames differ between Windows and Linux. Windows typically restricts
233 filenames which contain certain reserved characters (e.g.the character :
234 which is used to delimit the beginning of a stream name by Windows), while
235 Linux allows a slightly wider set of valid characters in filenames. Windows
236 servers can remap such characters when an explicit mapping is specified in
237 the Server's registry. Samba starting with version 3.10 will allow such
238 filenames (ie those which contain valid Linux characters, which normally
239 would be forbidden for Windows/CIFS semantics) as long as the server is
240 configured for Unix Extensions (and the client has not disabled
241 /proc/fs/cifs/LinuxExtensionsEnabled).
244 CIFS VFS Mount Options
245 ======================
246 A partial list of the supported mount options follows:
247 user The user name to use when trying to establish
249 password The user password. If the mount helper is
250 installed, the user will be prompted for password
251 if it is not supplied.
252 ip The ip address of the target server
253 unc The target server Universal Network Name (export) to
255 domain Set the SMB/CIFS workgroup name prepended to the
256 username during CIFS session establishment
257 uid If CIFS Unix extensions are not supported by the server
258 this overrides the default uid for inodes. For mounts to
259 servers which do support the CIFS Unix extensions, such
260 as a properly configured Samba server, the server provides
261 the uid, gid and mode. For servers which do not support
262 the Unix extensions, the default uid (and gid) returned on
263 lookup of existing files is the uid (gid) of the person
264 who executed the mount (root, except when mount.cifs
265 is configured setuid for user mounts) unless the "uid="
266 (gid) mount option is specified. For the uid (gid) of newly
267 created files and directories, ie files created since
268 the last mount of the server share, the expected uid
269 (gid) is cached as as long as the inode remains in
270 memory on the client. Also note that permission
271 checks (authorization checks) on accesses to a file occur
272 at the server, but there are cases in which an administrator
273 may want to restrict at the client as well. For those
274 servers which do not report a uid/gid owner
275 (such as Windows), permissions can also be checked at the
276 client, and a crude form of client side permission checking
277 can be enabled by specifying file_mode and dir_mode on
279 gid If CIFS Unix extensions are not supported by the server
280 this overrides the default gid for inodes.
281 file_mode If CIFS Unix extensions are not supported by the server
282 this overrides the default mode for file inodes.
283 dir_mode If CIFS Unix extensions are not supported by the server
284 this overrides the default mode for directory inodes.
285 port attempt to contact the server on this tcp port, before
286 trying the usual ports (port 445, then 139).
287 iocharset Codepage used to convert local path names to and from
288 Unicode. Unicode is used by default for network path
289 names if the server supports it. If iocharset is
290 not specified then the nls_default specified
291 during the local client kernel build will be used.
292 If server does not support Unicode, this parameter is
294 rsize default read size
295 wsize default write size
296 rw mount the network share read-write (note that the
297 server may still consider the share read-only)
298 ro mount network share read-only
299 version used to distinguish different versions of the
300 mount helper utility (not typically needed)
301 sep if first mount option (after the -o), overrides
302 the comma as the separator between the mount
304 -o user=myname,password=mypassword,domain=mydom
305 could be passed instead with period as the separator by
306 -o sep=.user=myname.password=mypassword.domain=mydom
307 this might be useful when comma is contained within username
308 or password or domain. This option is less important
309 when the cifs mount helper cifs.mount (version 1.1 or later)
311 nosuid Do not allow remote executables with the suid bit
312 program to be executed. This is only meaningful for mounts
313 to servers such as Samba which support the CIFS Unix Extensions.
314 If you do not trust the servers in your network (your mount
315 targets) it is recommended that you specify this option for
317 exec Permit execution of binaries on the mount.
318 noexec Do not permit execution of binaries on the mount.
319 dev Recognize block devices on the remote mount.
320 nodev Do not recognize devices on the remote mount.
321 suid Allow remote files on this mountpoint with suid enabled to
322 be executed (default for mounts when executed as root,
323 nosuid is default for user mounts).
324 credentials Although ignored by the cifs kernel component, it is used by
325 the mount helper, mount.cifs. When mount.cifs is installed it
326 opens and reads the credential file specified in order
327 to obtain the userid and password arguments which are passed to
329 guest Although ignored by the kernel component, the mount.cifs
330 mount helper will not prompt the user for a password
331 if guest is specified on the mount options. If no
332 password is specified a null password will be used.
333 perm Client does permission checks (vfs_permission check of uid
334 and gid of the file against the mode and desired operation),
335 Note that this is in addition to the normal ACL check on the
336 target machine done by the server software.
337 Client permission checking is enabled by default.
338 noperm Client does not do permission checks. This can expose
339 files on this mount to access by other users on the local
340 client system. It is typically only needed when the server
341 supports the CIFS Unix Extensions but the UIDs/GIDs on the
342 client and server system do not match closely enough to allow
343 access by the user doing the mount.
344 Note that this does not affect the normal ACL check on the
345 target machine done by the server software (of the server
346 ACL against the user name provided at mount time).
347 serverino Use servers inode numbers instead of generating automatically
348 incrementing inode numbers on the client. Although this will
349 make it easier to spot hardlinked files (as they will have
350 the same inode numbers) and inode numbers may be persistent,
351 note that the server does not guarantee that the inode numbers
352 are unique if multiple server side mounts are exported under a
353 single share (since inode numbers on the servers might not
354 be unique if multiple filesystems are mounted under the same
355 shared higher level directory). Note that this requires that
356 the server support the CIFS Unix Extensions as other servers
357 do not return a unique IndexNumber on SMB FindFirst (most
358 servers return zero as the IndexNumber). Parameter has no
359 effect to Windows servers and others which do not support the
360 CIFS Unix Extensions.
361 noserverino Client generates inode numbers (rather than using the actual one
362 from the server) by default.
363 setuids If the CIFS Unix extensions are negotiated with the server
364 the client will attempt to set the effective uid and gid of
365 the local process on newly created files, directories, and
366 devices (create, mkdir, mknod).
367 nosetuids The client will not attempt to set the uid and gid on
368 on newly created files, directories, and devices (create,
369 mkdir, mknod) which will result in the server setting the
370 uid and gid to the default (usually the server uid of the
371 usern who mounted the share). Letting the server (rather than
372 the client) set the uid and gid is the default. This
373 parameter has no effect if the CIFS Unix Extensions are not
375 netbiosname When mounting to servers via port 139, specifies the RFC1001
376 source name to use to represent the client netbios machine
377 name when doing the RFC1001 netbios session initialize.
378 direct Do not do inode data caching on files opened on this mount.
379 This precludes mmaping files on this mount. In some cases
380 with fast networks and little or no caching benefits on the
381 client (e.g. when the application is doing large sequential
382 reads bigger than page size without rereading the same data)
383 this can provide better performance than the default
384 behavior which caches reads (reaadahead) and writes
385 (writebehind) through the local Linux client pagecache
386 if oplock (caching token) is granted and held. Note that
387 direct allows write operations larger than page size
388 to be sent to the server.
389 acl Allow setfacl and getfacl to manage posix ACLs if server
390 supports them. (default)
391 noacl Do not allow setfacl and getfacl calls on this mount
392 user_xattr Allow getting and setting user xattrs as OS/2 EAs (extended
393 attributes) to the server (default) e.g. via setfattr
394 and getfattr utilities.
395 nouser_xattr Do not allow getfattr/setfattr to get/set xattrs
396 mapchars Translate six of the seven reserved characters (not backslash)
398 to the remap range (above 0xF000), which also
399 allows the CIFS client to recognize files created with
400 such characters by Windows's POSIX emulation. This can
401 also be useful when mounting to most versions of Samba
402 (which also forbids creating and opening files
403 whose names contain any of these seven characters).
404 This has no effect if the server does not support
406 nomapchars Do not translate any of these seven characters (default).
408 The mount.cifs mount helper also accepts a few mount options before -o
411 -S take password from stdin (equivalent to setting the environment
412 variable "PASSWD_FD=0"
413 -V print mount.cifs version
414 -? display simple usage information
416 With recent 2.6 kernel versions of modutils, the version of the cifs kernel
417 module can be displayed via modinfo.
419 Misc /proc/fs/cifs Flags and Debug Info
420 =======================================
421 Informational pseudo-files:
422 DebugData Displays information about active CIFS sessions
424 Stats Lists summary resource usage information as well as per
425 share statistics, if CONFIG_CIFS_STATS in enabled
426 in the kernel configuration.
428 Configuration pseudo-files:
429 MultiuserMount If set to one, more than one CIFS session to
430 the same server ip address can be established
431 if more than one uid accesses the same mount
432 point and if the uids user/password mapping
433 information is available. (default is 0)
434 PacketSigningEnabled If set to one, cifs packet signing is enabled
435 and will be used if the server requires
436 it. If set to two, cifs packet signing is
437 required even if the server considers packet
438 signing optional. (default 1)
439 cifsFYI If set to one, additional debug information is
440 logged to the system error log. (default 0)
441 ExtendedSecurity If set to one, SPNEGO session establishment
442 is allowed which enables more advanced
443 secure CIFS session establishment (default 0)
444 NTLMV2Enabled If set to one, more secure password hashes
445 are used when the server supports them and
446 when kerberos is not negotiated (default 0)
447 traceSMB If set to one, debug information is logged to the
448 system error log with the start of smb requests
449 and responses (default 0)
450 LookupCacheEnable If set to one, inode information is kept cached
451 for one second improving performance of lookups
453 OplockEnabled If set to one, safe distributed caching enabled.
455 LinuxExtensionsEnabled If set to one then the client will attempt to
456 use the CIFS "UNIX" extensions which are optional
457 protocol enhancements that allow CIFS servers
458 to return accurate UID/GID information as well
459 as support symbolic links. If you use servers
460 such as Samba that support the CIFS Unix
461 extensions but do not want to use symbolic link
462 support and want to map the uid and gid fields
463 to values supplied at mount (rather than the
464 actual values, then set this to zero. (default 1)
466 These experimental features and tracing can be enabled by changing flags in
467 /proc/fs/cifs (after the cifs module has been installed or built into the
468 kernel, e.g. insmod cifs). To enable a feature set it to 1 e.g. to enable
469 tracing to the kernel message log type:
471 echo 1 > /proc/fs/cifs/cifsFYI
473 and for more extensive tracing including the start of smb requests and responses
475 echo 1 > /proc/fs/cifs/traceSMB
477 Two other experimental features are under development and to test
478 require enabling CONFIG_CIFS_EXPERIMENTAL
480 More efficient write operations and SMB buffer handling
482 DNOTIFY fcntl: needed for support of directory change
483 notification and perhaps later for file leases)
485 Per share (per client mount) statistics are available in /proc/fs/cifs/Stats
486 if the kernel was configured with cifs statistics enabled. The statistics
487 represent the number of successful (ie non-zero return code from the server)
488 SMB responses to some of the more common commands (open, delete, mkdir etc.).
489 Also recorded is the total bytes read and bytes written to the server for
490 that share. Note that due to client caching effects this can be less than the
491 number of bytes read and written by the application running on the client.
492 The statistics for the number of total SMBs and oplock breaks are different in
493 that they represent all for that share, not just those for which the server
496 Also note that "cat /proc/fs/cifs/DebugData" will display information about
497 the active sessions and the shares that are mounted. Note: NTLMv2 enablement
498 will not work since they its implementation is not quite complete yet.
499 Do not alter these configuration values unless you are doing specific testing.
500 Enabling extended security works to Windows 2000 Workstations and XP but not to
501 Windows 2000 server or Samba since it does not usually send "raw NTLMSSP"
502 (instead it sends NTLMSSP encapsulated in SPNEGO/GSSAPI, which support is not
503 complete in the CIFS VFS yet).