sambaXP 2021: How compliant is the Linux client?
In his sambaXP 2021 talk Steve French (Microsoft / Samba Team) dives deep into testing the Linux client against Samba – to see which Linux APIs are supported, which POSIX features work and what still needs to be addressed.
File systems in Linux are complex, having to support over a hundred system calls (far more than POSIX specified), and Linux continues to evolve, adding new file system features and system calls every year. How compliant is the Linux client when mounted to Samba or other common servers? What about if the SMB3.1.1 POSIX Extensions are used? What works now with and without the extensions?
This presentation summarizes what we have found out from analyzing results of the standard Linux file system functional test suite ("xfstests") as well as other Linux tests and customer problems - showing what we have fixed, what works to most servers now (and how to configure best for these), what types of applications require mounting with the SMB3.1.1 POSIX extensions to work, and also shows what is missing in the protocol and how we might address these holes.
This is a great opportunity to discuss what minor extensions are needed to the protocol to enable even more Linux workloads over SMB. "xfstests," since they are run against every major Linux filesystem, has been invaluable in pointing out what we need to address in Samba and the Linux client as Linux file system requirements continue to evolve. This presentation helps understand what workloads work well today, and what we have to do for SMB3.1.1 protocol to optimally handle the ever broader set of Linux workloads in the future.
Slides: https://sambaxp.org/fileadmin/user_up...
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