In-kernel CIFS

Yesterday was an important day for Opensolaris. Something found it´s way in the kernel, i already knew but wasn´t allowed to talk about (at least not without a NDA saying “When you talk about this, we send a support technican spelling a dozen mighty curses in you datacenter. And, yeah, we know where you park your car …” ;) ). Alan Wright announced the putback of the code changes resulting out of PSARC 2006/715, or for mortals like me: The in-kernel CIFS service. This doesn´t mean just the integration to mount CIFS shares. That´s a different project. With this changes CIFS get a first class citizen besides NFS. Opensolaris Build 77 will give you a kernel-integrated CIFS server. And as a CIFS server alone is only half the answer to the question, there will be the integration of NDMP for backups or ICAP for integrating virus scanning software. So stay tuned, albeit the page isn´t activated you will find more informationsat the CIFS community at opensolaris.org soon. Meanwhile you should look at Bob Porass´”Fish -n- CIFS” for more informations. PS: I can only assume, that NTAP saw something like this coming when they filed their “all in”-lawsuit…