Sharemgr gets a new protocol

With the introduction of SMB (aka CIFS) server support to Solaris, sharemgr has been enhanced to fully support it. The SMB server implements Windows file sharing functionality. While some of the new features have been discussed in earlier blog entries, there are a few new features as well as details on how the SMB functionality is mapped into sharemgr that will be covered in more detail. The new features include:

• new protocol "smb"
• a group may have either, or both, of "nfs" and "smb" enabled
  
• a share may have multiple resource names
• resource names are case insensitive for all protocols
  
• resources may be renamed
• resource names may be used to identify shares on the command line
• resources may have protocol specific properties for protocols that support this concept
  
• sharectl supports SMB operational properties
  

In general, sharemgr behaves for SMB the same as it does for NFS.  The NFS functionality hasn't been changed other than the resource names can be used as an alias for the path. A given share group may have either or both "nfs" and "smb" enabled. When SMB is enabled, there may be some things that are required for NFS that weren't when only NFS was enabled.

Subsequent blog entries will discuss the SMB support in more detail. Others bloggers will be covering the SMB functionality in more detail.

Posted at 07:54AM Nov 05, 2007 by Douglas McCallum in General  |