Date: February 26, 1999

Subject: smbmount / smbmnt / smbumount
=============================================================================

The Samba-Team wishes to make known that the above programs are a part of
the SMBFS software package for the Linux operating system. They are very
definitely NOT part of Samba and are in general NOT supported by the
Samba-Team.

In repsonse to flames to comp.protocols.smb and to feedback to
samba-bugs@samba.org we wish to place on record that the reason for which
these programs have not received the attention that some folks expect
from the Samba-Team is as stated above, they are NOT part of samba.

Out of empathy for the Samba user base we have taken the liberty of
including patched source code for the above "SMBFS package" utilities
in the Samba tarball.

Mike Warfield is temporary caretaker of SMBFS and may be contacted at
mike@samba.org.

In deference to the fact that these programs are NOT part of Samba
the default binary packaging facilities included in the samba tarball
do NOT automatically create the updates needed for the Linux 2.2.x
kernel. If you require the updated smbmount / smbmnt / smbumount tools
then it will be necessary to modify the samba2.spec file to include
the --with-smbmount option to the samba "configure" script _AND_
you will need to add these files to the appropriate locations in the "install"
and "files" sections also. The platform specific RPM SPEC files that you
will need to modify may be found under ~samba/packaging/"platform".

The Samba-Team has considered the alternatives. These are:
	1) Include all SMBFS code with Samba:
		- rejected because we do not have the resources to support it.
		- SMBFS is specific and limited to Linux
	2) Just build the smbmount / smbmnt / smbumount binaries:
		- doing this will break RPM dependencies for the SMBFS package
		- this is not a good option either
	3) Encourage people to use the "smbsh" utility that is part of samba
		and is being developed to replace the need for "SMBFS"
		- this is portable to platforms other than Linux
		- it allows each user to authenticate as themselves instead
		  of allowing all users to use an SMB session that is
                  authenticated as just one user.

We have chosen the later and hope that our users will understand and support
the decision that has been made.

For and on behalf of the Samba-Team
John H Terpstra