amiga-smbfs/documentation/smbfs.doc

A SMB file system wrapper for AmigaOS, using the AmiTCP V3 API
==============================================================

1. What is it?

This document describes the smbfs program, which implements an SMB file system
for AmigaOS.

This file system can be used to access files made available by file servers
which implement the SMBv1 protocol, such as Microsoft Windows or any other
platform which supports the free Samba product.

These files can be accessed using shell commands such as "List", the Workbench
or utilities such as Directory Opus as if the file server were a local disk
drive.

You may find smbfs useful if you want to access a NAS (network-attached
storage) drive, or even a Linux file server.


2. What do you need to get started?

You need a TCP/IP stack that supports the AmiTCP V3 API, such as Miami, the
original free AmiTCP 3.0 release, AmiTCP 4.x, Miami Deluxe, AmiTCP Genesis or
Roadshow and the obligatory networking gear. All these items need to be in
good shape and properly configured.

Most important, you need a computer which offers file sharing services using
the SMBv1 protocol.

It often helps to have Samba installed on your Amiga, too, as this can aid in
tracking down bugs and obtaining information which smbfs cannot obtain all by
itself.

Last but not least, you need to be proficient in configuring and using the
TCP/IP stack; networking knowledge is definitely assumed.

The smbfs program requires AmigaOS 2.04 or higher to work.


3. Preparations

You need to know which computer's files you want to share using the smbfs file
system. That computer must be known by name or by its IPv4 address.

The name of the computer to connect to cannot be longer than 16 characters.

You need to know which service you want to connect to on the target computer.
You can find out which services are available on a certain computer by using
the Samba "smbclient" program.

For example, if you were to query the services offered by a machine called
"sourcery" you could enter the following:

    samba:bin/smbclient -L sourcery

And you might get the following information:

    added interface ip=192.168.0.1 bcast=192.168.0.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
    Password: Domain=[ARBEITSGRUPPE] OS=[AmigaOS] Server=[Samba 2.0.7]

            Sharename      Type      Comment
            ---------      ----      -------
            All            Disk      All volumes in the system
            IPC$           IPC       IPC Service (Amiga 3000UX)
            olsen          Disk      Home Directories

            Server               Comment
            ---------            -------
            SOURCERY             Amiga 3000UX

            Workgroup            Master
            ---------            -------
            ARBEITSGRUPPE        SOURCERY

The share name to connect to would be "ALL".

You may need to know which login name and which password are required to
connect to the shared resource.

Very rarely, you would need to know the name of the work group or domain which
the file server is a member of. In the example above, the name of the domain
would be "ARBEITSGRUPPE".


4. Starting and stopping the file system

smbfs is an uncommon kind of file system in that you do not use the "Mount"
command to mount it. In fact, smbfs is a program which can be launched from
the shell, using command line parameters to tell it which resources should be
used. But you can also start it from Workbench: in this case you would have to
put the program's command line options into icon tool types.

4.1. Starting the file system

By now you should have prepared the following information:

    - Name of the computer to connect to; this would be the file server
    - Name of the shared SMB resource to connect to
    - Login name and password (optional)

That's basically everything you need to know to continue -- unless something
goes wrong, but more on that later on.

Now you can start the file system. For example, to connect to the file server
called sourcery and the shared all resource it provides, using the login name
"PCGuest" and not providing any password, you would enter the following:

    smbfs user=PCGuest service=//sourcery/all

This would cause a new device by the name of "SMBFS:" to be mounted, showing
all files and drawers the sourcery server makes available for sharing.

You can also run the smbfs program in the background, like so: "Run >NIL:
smbfs user=PCGuest service=//sourcery/all".

This is not recommended, though, because it becomes much harder to tell why
the smbfs program did not work correctly (as it invariably will at some
point). Any error messages which could help in figuring out what the problem
may have been will be lost.

If you have trouble setting up the smbfs program, first make sure that it
works correctly without the "Run >NIL:" instructions and have a look at any
error messages it may produce.

4.2. Stopping the file system

How do you "unmount" the file system? Stopping the smbfs program will unmount
the file system. This can be accomplished by either hitting the [Ctrl]+C keys
or by using the "Status" shell command and then the "Break" command.

For example, the "Status" shell command may produce the following output:

    Process  1: Loaded as command: TURBOTEXT
    Process  2: Loaded as command: Work:Tools/Blowup
    Process  3: Loaded as command: Work:Tools/Sashimi
    Process  4: Loaded as command: Work:CyberTools/CyberGuard
    Process  5: Loaded as command: Work:Tools/OpenDevicePatch
    Process  6: Loaded as command: CED
    Process  7: Loaded as command: Workbench
    Process  8: Loaded as command: Status
    Process  9: No command loaded
    Process 10: Loaded as command: SMBFS '//sourcery/all'

Look at the last line describing process number 10: it shows the name of the
file system program smbfs and the name of the SMB share it is connected to.

To stop this file system and effectively unmount it, use the shell "Break"
command; in this case you would enter "Break 10" to stop the file system.

Note that the smbfs program may not quit immediately. It may have to wait
until the last client has released all the resources it obtained from the file
system.

You may have to send more than one "Break" command to stop the smbfs program.

4.3. Temporarily disabling the file system

If, for example, you need to temporarily shut down the network, smbfs will be
unable to do its job, at least until the network becomes operational again. In
the mean time Workbench and other programs will keep accessing the file system
and may get stuck.

You can avoid most of these problems by temporarily disabling the file system
until it can access the network again. For this to work, you need to start the
smbfs program in the shell and use the VOLUMENAME option, which will make a
disk icon appear in the Workbench window.

To disable the file system, hit the [Ctrl]+D keys or use the "Break" command
(e.g. "Break 10 D" if smbfs is running as process number 10).

To re-enable the file system again, hit the [Ctrl]+E keys or use the "Break"
command (e.g. "Break 10 E" if smbfs is running as process number 10).


5. Startup options

The smbfs program supports a number of options which control how it works.

You can enter these options as command line parameters, or, if you start the
smbfs program from Workbench, you can set these options as icon tool types.

Here is how the options look like, in alphabetical order (as command line
parameters):

    CACHE=CACHESIZE/N/K
    CASE=CASESENSITIVE/S
    CHANGECASE/S
    CLIENT=CLIENTNAME/K
    CP437/S
    CP850/S
    DEVICE=DEVICENAME/K
    DISABLEEXALL/S
    DOMAIN=WORKGROUP/K
    DST=DSTOFFSET/N/K
    MAXNAMELEN/N/K
    MAXTRANSMIT/N/K
    NETBIOS/S
    OMITHIDDEN/S
    PASSWORD/K
    PROTOCOL/K
    QUIET/S
    RAISEPRIORITY/S
    SERVER=SERVERNAME/K
    SERVICE/A
    SESSIONSETUP/K
    SETENV/S
    TIMEOUT/N/K
    TRANSLATE=TRANSLATIONFILE/K
    TZ=TIMEZONEOFFSET/N/K
    UNICODE/K
    USER=USERNAME/K
    VOLUME=VOLUMENAME/K
    WRITEBEHIND/S

5.1. Server and authentication options

In order to use a shared networked file system, you need the following
information:

    1. The name or the IPv4 address of the file server and the name of
       the "share" (file system) you want to access.
    2. The user name required to access the "share" (file system),
       unless the server does not need it.
    3. The password required to access the "share" (file system),
       unless the server does not need it.

The parameters relevant for this information are described below.

5.1.1. "SHARE=SERVICE/A"

This parameter takes the form of "//server-name/share-name" or
"//server-name:port-number/share-name".

For example "//sourcery/all", "//192.168.0.1/all", "//nas:445/files",
"//nas:microsoft-ds/files" would all be valid "SHARE" parameters.

In this example "server-name" must be either the IPv4 address of the file
server to connect to, or the name of the server (note that server names cannot
be longer than 16 characters).

If necessary, you can specify which port number should be used when making the
connection. The port number is optional, though. In place of the port (e.g.
445) number you can also use the name of a TCP/UDP service (e.g.
"microsoft-ds").

Finally, you need to tell the SMB server which service you want to connect to,
which for the smbfs program should be the name of a shared network file
system. In the example the name of the shared network file system would be
"share-name".

5.1.2. "USER=USERNAME/K"

In order to connect to an SMB share, the server requires that a user name is
provided. If you omit the user name, the smbfs program will use "GUEST" as a
replacement.

If you do provide a user name, it must not be longer than 64 characters. The
name you provide will be translated to all upper case characters.

You need not provide for a user name on the command line. Alternatively, you
may configure an environment variable whose contents will be used instead. The
variable could be set up like this:

    SetEnv smbfs_username *your user name*
    Copy ENV:smbfs_username ENVARC:

You may also use the "smbfs_user" environment variable in place of the
"smbfs_username" variable. The two are aliases for one another, but smbfs will
read only one of the two.

5.1.3. "PASSWORD/K"

You may not need to provide a password in order to connect to an SMB share. If
you omit it, the smbfs program will use an empty password.

If you do need a password to go along with the user name, your password cannot
be longer than 64 characters.

You need not provide for a password on the command line. Alternatively, you
may configure an environment variable whose contents will be used instead. The
variable could be set up like this:

    SetEnv smbfs_password *your password*
    Copy ENV:smbfs_password ENVARC:

Keep in mind that passwords like these really should not be exposed by storing
them in environment variables. But then the protocol smbfs uses is almost as
insecure as it gets anyway.

The authentication process only works if the machine you are connecting to
knows about the user name and password you want to use. As of this writing,
smbfs can only be used for authenticating against a password server that is
the same machine as the one on which you wish to access a share.

5.1.4. "CHANGECASE/S"

By default the password you provide with the "PASSWORD" option will not be
changed before it is used for accessing the server's shared network file
system.

However, it may be required to change the password to all-uppercase characters
before it can be used. If this is necessary, you should either provide the
password in this form or resort to the "CHANGECASE" option, which will cause
it to be translated to all upper case characters.

5.1.5. "DOMAIN=WORKGROUP/K"

This option may be omitted, in which case the smbfs program will ask the file
server about the work group which it is a member of. Should the server fail to
respond with this information, the smbfs program will use "WORKGROUP" as the
domain name.

You should not need to specify the name of the work group or domain which the
file server to connect to is a member of. However, if you do need to use it,
you must make sure that the name is not longer than 16 characters. The name
you provide will be translated to all upper case characters.

You need not provide for a work group or domain name on the command line.
Alternatively, you may configure an environment variable whose contents will
be used instead. The variable could be set up like this:

    SetEnv smbfs_workgroup *name of domain or workgroup*
    Copy ENV:smbfs_workgroup ENVARC:

You may also use the "smbfs_domain" environment variable in place of the
"smbfs_workgroup" variable. The two are aliases for one another, but smbfs
will read only one of the two.

5.1.6. "NETBIOS/S"

Older server software such as "Microsoft Windows XP" may not respond to the
requests of the smbfs program to connect to the shared network file system.

If the connection attempt fails immediately you may want to try the "NETBIOS"
switch which tells the smbfs program to use an older protocol when trying to
talk to the server.

5.1.7. "CLIENT=CLIENTNAME/K"

The smbfs program will attempt to connect to the file server by providing the
name of the computer you connect from.

In some cases this may be undesirable as the computer's name differs from what
the file server expects.

You can use the "CLIENT" parameter to tell smbfs under which name it should
announce itself to the server.

This parameter is optional and will be translated to all upper case
characters; it cannot be longer than 16 characters.

Please note that the "CLIENT" parameter will be ignored unless the "NETBIOS"
switch is used, too.

5.1.8. "SERVER=SERVERNAME/K"

smbfs will attempt to connect to the file server by providing the name you
specified using the "SHARE" option.

In some cases this may be undesirable as the server's name differs from what
you specified as the share name. You can use the "SERVER" parameter to tell
smbfs under which name it should contact the server.

This parameter is optional and will be translated to all upper case
characters; it cannot be longer than 16 characters.

Please note that the "SERVER" parameter will be ignored unless the "NETBIOS"
switch is used, too.

5.2. File name conversion

The shared network file system may not be using the same character set as your
Amiga, so a translation may be required to allow you to access files and
drawers.

The built-in default translation method should cover the original Amiga
character set ("ISO-8859-1", also known as "ISO-Latin-1"), but you have a
choice to use a different method.

Please note that you can only pick one translation method, unless you disable
translation altogether.

Also note that file and drawer names which cannot be represented on the Amiga
due to lack of a suitable translation will be treated like "hidden" files and
drawers. Names which are not safe to use on the Amiga, on account of
containing reserved characters, will be "hidden" as well.

5.2.1. "UNICODE/K"

The built-in default translation method is restricted to the part of Unicode
which is covered by the ISO-8859-1 character set. It is enabled by default, as
if "UNICODE=on" had been used. You can disable it with "UNICODE=off", which
completely disables the translation.

Note: some Samba versions will return corrupted file and drawer names unless
Unicode support is enabled. Names which use only US-ASCII characters appear to
be generally safe to use and are unlikely to suffer from corruption.

5.2.2. "CP437/S"

The switch "CP437" enables a code page-based translation which works well
enough with old Samba versions. "CP437" stands for "code page 437", which is
what the original IBM-PC would use.

The "CP437" switch disables Unicode support.

5.2.3. "CP850/S"

The switch "CP850" enables a code page-based translation which works well
enough with old Samba versions. "CP850" stands for "code page 850", which is a
variant of what the original IBM-PC would use. This variant is intended to be
used in western Europe and is more compatible with the ISO-8859-1 character
set than the "CP437" variant.

The "CP850" switch disables Unicode support.

5.2.4. "TRANSLATE=TRANSLATIONFILE/K"

How the individual names are to be translated is determined by the contents of
a file name translation table file such as the ones that ship with Workbench
in the "L:FileSystem_Trans" drawer.

The first 256 bytes of each such file must consist of the mapping of Amiga
characters (this would be the ISO-8859-1 character set) to the different
character set, and the second 256 characters must describe a mapping back from
the different character set to the Amiga.

In most cases the "L:FileSystem_Trans/INTL.crossdos" translation table file
should be sufficient.

To specify which file contains the translation tables to use you would use the
"TRANSLATIONFILE" parameter, e.g. "TRANSLATIONFILE=L:FileSystem_Trans/INTL.crossdos".
However, you might want to try the "CP850" switch instead which should produce
the same effect.

The "TRANSLATE" option disables Unicode support.

5.3. Performance tuning

You may be able to put the smbfs program to good use, but overall performance,
reliability and memory usage may still be somewhat lacking. These aspects may
be tuned with the following parameters.

5.3.1. "CACHE=CACHESIZE/N/K"

The file system attempts to optimize accesses to the file server when
directory entries are being read.

This information is stored in a cache which by default will hold up to 170
entries. Since each entry will require about 255 bytes of storage, the entire
170 entry cache will occupy more than 40 KB of memory.

You may want to change this requirement, by making the cache smaller or larger
using the "CACHESIZE" parameter. The size of the cache cannot be smaller than
10 entries.

5.3.2. "RAISEPRIORITY/S"

The smbfs program can be run at a higher priority than it would normally do
(normal would be priority 0), which might increase performance, but raise
system load, too. If the "RAISEPRIORITY" switch is used, the smbfs program
will run at the same priority as other Amiga file systems do (this would be
priority 10).

5.3.3. "TIMEOUT/N/K"

The smbfs program may lose the connection to the server during file system
operations. While it will try to reestablish a connection to the server, some
time has to pass before it becomes clear that the server connection is no
longer working correctly.

You can set the number of seconds which have to pass before the smbfs program
will stop waiting for the server to respond, shut down the connection and try
again. For example, "TIMEOUT=5" will select a timeout of 5 seconds.

5.3.4. "WRITEBEHIND/S"

The smbfs program can try to improve write performance by not waiting for the
server to confirm that all the data just transmitted has in fact been stored.
There is a risk involved in that the server may not have been able to store
the data and you will never know about it.

Please note that the "WRITEBEHIND" switch has no effect if "PROTOCOL=nt1" is
used because the smbfs program will then be using a different server write
command which does not support the "write behind" functionality.

5.4. Compatibility

Both the file server and the software running on your Amiga may suffer from
compatibility issues. For example, Amiga programs may be unable to deal with
file names longer than 30 characters and then crash as a result. For some of
these issues workarounds may be available.

5.4.1. "CASE=CASESENSITIVE/S"

Some file servers treat files and drawers as different if their names differ
only in whether individual letters are using upper/lower case characters. For
example, on the Amiga we can expect that names such as "Work:File1" and
"Work:file1" would refer to the same file, but you cannot expect this
assumption to hold true for shared network file systems.

For file servers which would see "File1" and "file1" as different names you
should activate the "CASESENSITIVE" switch to treat those files as being
different.

There is a catch though: the AmigaDOS file naming scheme does not follow this
model and you may run into problems when you are trying to use it.

By default, the smbfs program does not treat file and drawer names differently
which only differ with respect to the case of letters.

5.4.2. "DISABLEEXALL/S"

There are two different methods for reading the names of files and drawers
stored in an Amiga volume or drawer.

The original method ("Examine/ExNext") will read the individual entries one at
a time, and no name may be longer than 107 characters.

The second method ("ExAll"), introduced with Kickstart 2.0, can deliver more
entries and more quickly than the original method. Also, directory entry names
may be longer than "just" 107 characters (the smbfs program supports file and
drawer names of up to 255 characters).

The smbfs program supports both methods, but there is a catch: Some Amiga
software struggles to handle the number of entries delivered by the "ExAll"
method, and names longer than 30 characters are a problem. Such software may
malfunction and even crash.

To avoid problems with such software, the smbfs program can be made to pretend
that it did not support the "ExAll" method. Use the "DISABLEEXALL" switch to
disable the "ExAll" method.

Please note that if the "DISABLEEXALL" switch is used, the smbfs program will
make files and drawers appear to be "hidden" if their names are longer than
107 characters.

5.4.3. "MAXNAMELEN/N/K"

Some Amiga programs struggle with file and drawer names longer than 30
characters. They may malfunction and even crash when the smbfs program
delivers them.

You can tell the smbfs program not to deliver any file or drawer names which
are longer than a certain number of characters using the "MAXNAMELEN" option.
For example, "MAXNAMELEN=30" would make files and drawers appear to be
"hidden" if their names are longer than 30 characters.

5.4.4. "MAXTRANSMIT/N/K"

You can fine-tune the size of the transmission buffer which the smbfs program
uses when reading and writing files. The server may not have picked a buffer
size which suits smbfs well. You can choose a smaller buffer size, if needed.

The minimum transmission buffer size is 8000 bytes (this is also the default
buffer size), and the maximum permitted size is 65535 bytes.

Please note that the transmission buffer size you asked for need not be
accepted by the file server, which may choose to use a much smaller buffer.

5.4.5. "PROTOCOL/K"

The smbfs program talks to the file server using a protocol called SMBv1,
using commands and data structures described by the Common Internet File
System documentation.

There are several versions of the SMBv1 protocol in use, and depending upon
how old the server software is, smbfs may not work well with the file server.

It may help if you change the protocol level which the smbfs program uses. The
default is "PROTOCOL=core" which should work well enough with SMB server
software available before 2009, and which is particularly suited for use with
the Samba server software. How do you know if the Samba* server software is
being used? Unless you are connecting to a Microsoft Windows server, you can
practically assume that Samba will provide the shared network file system.

The alternative is "PROTOCOL=nt1" which might provide better compatibility and
performance with Microsoft Windows systems.

When in doubt, stick with "PROTOCOL=core".

5.4.6. "SESSIONSETUP/K"

If the UNICODE=ON option is in effect, the smbfs program may not be able to
connect to the server because it expects Unicode text to be used only after
the server session has been established.

With UNICODE=ON the SESSIONSETUP=DELAY option will delay enabling Unicode
support until after the session has been established. SESSIONSETUP=NODELAY
will enable Unicode support at the earliest possible time instead.

The default is SESSIONSETUP=DELAY which works both with Samba, and seems to be
required for Microsoft Windows systems.

5.5. Time conversion

The file server which the smbfs program connects to may not share the exact
system time with your Amiga. Typically, it will expect file and drawer
modification time information to be recorded in Universally Coordinated Time
(UTC), rather than your local time zone (and the effects of daylight savings
time).

You can, and should tell the smbfs program how far the local Amiga time
deviates from UTC. By default the smbfs program will try to use the time zone
information configured in the "Locale" preferences. This may not be
sufficient, or even the wrong choice.

5.5.1. "TZ=TIMEZONEOFFSET/N/K"

By default the file system will use the current Locale settings to translate
between the local time and the time used by the file server.

For some configurations, however, this is impractical since the server's time
zone is not configured properly. For these rare cases you may want to hard
code a certain time zone offset using the "TIMEZONEOFFSET" options.

You need to provide the number of minutes to subtract from the local time in
order to translate it into the corresponding UTC value. For example, in
central Europe using CET, you would use "TZ=60" since CET is one hour ahead of
UTC.

If you use the "TIMEZONEOFFSET" option, then the smbfs program will ignore the
time zone information configured in the "Locale" preferences.

5.5.2. "DST=DSTOFFSET/N/K"

This option can be used to adjust the file date stamps to take local daylight
savings time into account.

The number to specify here is by how many minutes local time has been moved
ahead, which is typically 60.

Note that smbfs does not know when daylight savings time begins and ends. It
is up to you to select the correct adjustment value when appropriate.

5.6. Miscellaneous

5.6.1. "DEVICE=DEVICENAME/K" and "VOLUME=VOLUMENAME/K"

The smbfs program can announce itself as an AmigaDOS file system by using one
of two different methods.

The first method involves announcing itself only as a file system device. This
should be sufficient in most cases but has a drawback in that the device will
not be usable from Workbench since the file system will not appear as a disk
icon.

You tell smbfs to use a specific device name by using the "DEVICE" command
line parameter, e.g. "DEVICE=SMBFS:". Note that device names must be unique,
i.e. there must be no other device by the same name in the system; smbfs will
report an error and exit if it finds one.

The second method involves announcing itself as a volume. This has the benefit
of making the file system usable from Workbench since a disk icon will appear
for it.

You tell smbfs to use a specific volume name by using the "VOLUME" command
line parameter, e.g. "VOLUME=Sourcery:".

Both methods have advantages and drawbacks. The drawback of the "VOLUME"
method is that it may deadlock the native Amiga Samba port as soon as the file
system is mounted. The drawback of the "DEVICE" method is that the file system
will not be usable from Workbench.

If you wish, you can combine both methods; this is the approach most other
file systems use. And in fact, when you tell smbfs to add a volume it will
also add a device to go along with it.

The "VOLUME" and "DEVICE" keywords are optional; if you omit both, smbfs will
pretend that you had used the "DEVICE=SMBFS:" parameter.

5.6.2. "OMITHIDDEN/S"

When requesting a directory listing, the file server may return some files and
drawers tagged as being hidden. By default smbfs will not treat these "hidden"
entries any different from the other directory entries, i.e. they are not
hidden from view.

You can request that the hidden entries should be omitted from directory
listings by using the "OMITHIDDEN" switch.

Note that even though a file or drawer may be hidden, you should still be able
to open and examine it.

5.6.3. "QUIET/S"

When started from shell, the smbfs program will print a message as soon as the
connection to the file server has been established.

If you do not want to see that message displayed, use the "QUIET" parameter.
Please note that the smbfs program may still show error messages.

5.6.4. "SETENV/S"

You may want to stop or disable/re-enabled a currently running smbfs program
through the shell "Break" command, but it may be impractical to figure out
which CLI process number is involved.

This is where the "SETENV" switch can help. If enabled, a global environment
variable will be set which can be used by script files to figure out which
CLI process number the respective smbfs program uses. The environment
variable will be deleted as soon as the smbfs program exits.

The environment variable name will be "smbfs-process/<device name>", e.g.
"smbfs-process/smbfs0", and it will contain the CLI process number which
the "Break" command can make use of.

You can find out which smbfs programs are currently running like so:

   1> List ENV:smbfs-process
   Directory "env:smbfs-process" on Wednesday 19-Sep-18 
   smbfs1                            3 ----rwed Today      10:43:16
   smbfs0                            2 ----rwed Today      10:43:13

   1> Echo "${smbfs-process/smbfs0}"
   8

Stopping a program can then be accomplished as follows:

   1> Break 8

Note: the "SETENV" switch only has an effect if you start the smbfs program
from the shell.

5.7. Debugging, diagnostics and bug reports

The smbfs program may not work as expected, and in order to help figuring out
what went wrong, a special debug-enabled version of the program should be
supplied along with the "normal" version you are using.

This special debug-enabled smbfs program ("smbfs.debug") can produce
diagnostic and progress report information which may be stored in a log file.

5.7.1. "DEBUGFILE/K"

If you want to capture the debug output of the smbfs program and have it
stored in a file for reference, please state the name of the file here, e.g.
"DEBUGFILE=ram:smbfs.log".

If the file already exists, debug output will be appended to it.

5.7.2. "DEBUGLEVEL=DEBUG/N/K"

By default the smbfs program operates in silent mode. It does not report what
it is doing, it just tries to respond to file system requests. To obtain
debugging output you may want to use the "DEBUG" option and specify a debug
level greater than 0, e.g. "DEBUG=2". The larger the number you specify the
more debugging output will be created.

Note that unless you state which file the debug output should be written to,
all debugging output will be sent to the shell window.

If you launched the smbfs program from Workbench, debug output will be
produced using the operating system's debug output functionality which
requires that you have a capturing program like "Sashimi" running in the
background.


6. Known problems

The design of smbfs follows the original file system concept behind the code
which the "Sharity-Light" file system is based upon. And that is a Unix file
system which differs from Amiga specific file systems in many ways which can
lead to problems which are discussed briefly below:

   - Single threaded design

     This means that it is not possible for several programs to fairly
     share the use of the file system. For example, a program that posts
     a long read request can tie up the file system almost exclusively
     for itself, and while it is busy all other clients will have to
     wait. Same goes for directory scanning.

   - Poor scalability

     This is associated with the single threaded design. When several
     programs are accessing the file system at the same time, overhead
     and unfair sharing of resources will drastically reduce the
     performance of the file system.

   - Separation of file data and metadata

     This means that the core of the file system treats the contents of
     a directory and the data attached to each file inside that
     directory as something different. This is a common concept with
     Unix file systems, but it is very different with Amiga file systems.
     In smbfs this data separation can cause problems when deleting
     files from a directory while that directory is being scanned,
     such as how this is being done by the "Delete" shell command. The
     effects of these problems are that a directory may not be deleted
     even though it is empty or that for the same directory the same
     file may be reported twice in the listing.

While there are no easy solutions for any of these problems, it does not mean
that smbfs is unusable. You just have to be more careful when you use the file
system. For example, if a directory's contents cannot be deleted due to one of
the problems mentioned above, you might want to retry later.

It should be noted that the problems described above are not inherent to the
original file system design. It's just that transferring that design to an
Amiga file system created the problems.


7. Credits

The smbfs file system is based upon prior work by P�l-Kristian Engstad, Volker
Lendecke, Mark A. Shand, Donald J. Becker, Rick Sladkey, Fred N. van Kempen,
Eric Kasten and Rudolf K�nig. It is a direct descendant of the "Sharity-Light"
file system written by Christian Starkjohann.

Version 1.80 incorporates changes from the MorphOS smbfs version 50.3, which
was kindly provided by Frank Mariak. The individual changes came from Harry
Sintonen, David Gerber and Frank Mariak.

The password encryption code was lifted from the Samba package. It was written
by Andrew Tridgell and the Samba Team.


8. Author

The "Sharity-Light" source code was adapted, wrapped into an AmigaOS layer,
subsequently debugged and enhanced by Olaf Barthel. If you wish to contact me,
you can reach me at:

    Olaf Barthel
    Gneisenaustr. 43
    D-31275 Lehrte

Or via e-mail:

    obarthel [at] gmx.net

If you want to submit a bug report or an enhancement request, please enclose
sufficient information to allow me to make sense of the problem. That includes
debugging logs produced using the "DEBUG" and "DEBUGFILE" options.

If possible, use the facilities for bug reporting and tracking on the
sourceforge.net web site at <http://sourceforge.net/projects/amiga-smbfs>,
which is the new home for this file system.


9. Source code

smbfs is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(version 2). The source code should have accompanied this program; if it
hasn't, please contact the author for a copy.

The program was compiled using the SAS/C 6.58 compiler, with the Roadshow SDK
providing for the TCP/IP stack API header files.