Reading Live SMB Files

[James Drabb]

On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 12:29, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Fr, den 27.02.2004 schrieb Adam Voigt um 18:18:
> > I think it can be done out of fstab, but you would still have to put
> > your username and password for the server in the fstab, plus this
> > doesn't allow for multiple users on the system.
> 
> As I said before: PAM! No need to store the passwd. in /etc/fstab and
> also allowing multiple users.

You can use a credentials file and point your /etc/fstab smbfs entry at
that.  Though only root will be able to mount it then, or mount it on
startup.  PAM and the /etc/fstab method are both a pain since it
requires you to know ahead of time what servers you want to mount.  We
have hundreds of servers where I work, so that would not be a real
option.

One thing I did notice is that Nautilus sucks for SMB.  konqueror is far
better.  I can browse an SMB share in konqueror and double-click say a
text file and kwrite/etc can read _and_ write to it.  Nautilus is pretty
much read only for SMB shares.  I like Gnome a lot more then KDE, though
this is one issue that makes me keep trying KDE to see if I can force
myself to like it.

There is also the usability issue.  MS Windows users are use to just
typing \\server\share in any url box or even the run dialog and getting
to a server.  If you have rights to that share, it is transparent and
seems as if it is just another partition on your drive.  It would be
nice to have some feature like this under Linux.

gnome-vfs needs to have transparent SMBFS support, then any Gnome app
could work with SMB shares with the same ease that a user would have
under MS Windows.  Does anyone know if there is any work being done on
something like this?

> Christoph

Jim Drabb
-- 
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The box said: "Requires Windows 98/2000/NT/XP or better."
So, I installed LINUX!
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James Drabb JR
Senior Programmer Analyst
Davenport, FL USA