Talk:Server Message Block

Headline text

Server Message Block should be capitalized

As per capitalization, refer to:

Nixdorf 18:19, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

But that doesn't trump common usage. If you google for "Server Message Block" and "Common Internet File System" you will find the versions with the capitals frequently used and the lowercase versions very rarely used. Morwen 18:22, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

You shall not strive to sink yourself to the least common denominator of common language use, you shall strive to elevate others to the high level of your own language use. Nixdorf 23:30, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Nothing in those documents dictates that "Server Message Block" should not be capitalized as such. "Server Message Block" is a name. Official Microsoft documentaion has it capitalized, IETF documents have it capitalized, Samba has it capitalized. To not capitalize it is improper. Iambk 04:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1. Server Message Block and Common Internet File System are proper nouns. 2. Articles discussing other protocols capitalize all the words in their names. See Transmission Control Protocol, Internet Protocol, etc.

I agree wholeheartedly. I have never seen Server Message Block written in lower-case (besides on Wikipedia). In addition to your reasons, Wikipedia:Naming conventions says "Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized" (emphasis mine). I'm going to make this move. -- Plutor 14:39, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting History

From [http://ubiqx.org/cifs/SMB.html]

From:	Steven French, Senior Software Engineer, IBM	
To:	Chris Hertel	

Chris, 

Hope things are going well in the cold north ...  

I thought the following info would be interesting to you. I 
met the original "inventor" of SMB a  few years ago - Dr. 
Barry Feigenbaum - who back in the early 80's was working on 
network software architecture for the infant IBM PCs,  
working for IBM in the Boca Raton plant in Florida. He 
mentioned that it was first called the "BAF" protocol (after 
his initials) but he later changed it to SMB. In the early 
DOS years IBM and Microsoft (with some input from Intel and 
3Com) contributed to it but by the time of the first OS/2 
server version (LANMAN1.0 dialect and later) Microsoft did 
much of the work (for "LAN Manager" and its relatives).

In [[1]] (sorry, it's German) a Samba developer makes it clear that Samba predates SMB support in Windows, so the corresponding paragraph in the article is misleading.

More History

My recollection is the SMB term was used to describe the file-sharing protocol employed by the MS-DOS 3.X "redirector" client and its companion "MSNet" server. Manufacturers shipping SMB-based networks may include 3-COM, HP and IBM. The LAN Manager term was in regular use during the development of the OS/2 and the LAN Manager/X (LM/X, a predecessor of SAMBA) server during the 1980s (well before 1990 as the article indicates). Conr2286 (talk) 00:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page cleaned up a little

I tried to clean up this page a little, as it was tagged for such, but I don't get to edit often, so I don't know if it's enough. I've added headings to separate out parts of the article from each other, and I added a little about samba in the history section... anything else?

OSI table would add clarity.

I would like an OSI model table here to show where the different parts of SMB and it's related protocols operate. Thanks -indolering

Look to this URL for that first. There is a good reason this is number one in a Google search (but it may violate your GFDL restriction):

 http://samba.anu.edu.au/cifs/docs/what-is-smb.html

Does that help? SMB is at the Application and Presentation layers. Actually, what led me here was a statement in ComputerWorld with some Microsoft idiot not knowing where SMB came from. IBM! I was going to retort to them that rather than using Samba I have used pcnfsd on Sun Solaris for the file serving. Right now I print to a Minolta Page Pro 1350W printer through a Zonet ZPS-2102 print server. Ever try to find what the driver files for it are on Windows? It is using IPP on Windows and (CUPS) on Linux. The biggest problem is that Microsoft demands a print server name it's own way rather than allowing the user to change it. So on Windows it shows up as Unknown with the name pagepro only being able to be inserted via adding it to the hosts file and using that instead of the IP address of the Zonet server. Go figure. hhhobbit 20:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does someone hate Advanced Server or what?

The comments about the SMB server code for System V are hardly neutral.

Performance Issues

Edited this section to remove the chip-on-shoulder "administrative ignorance" rant.

Legally authoritative

Finkelstein's "Report on Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Programme: An Assessment of Interoperability Information" links to this article in Annex B9. Metarhyme 00:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SMB and CIFS

The article says: At around the time when Sun Microsystems announced WebNFS [1], Microsoft launched an initiative in 1996 to rename SMB to Common Internet File System (CIFS)[1], and added more features, including support for symbolic links, hard links, larger file sizes and an attempt at supporting direct connection without all the NetBIOS trimmings — an effort that was largely experimental and required further refinement. Microsoft submitted the spec to the IETF[2], though this submission has expired.

Did it actually change name to CIFS? Is SMB just a legacy name? Why is the article not called CIFS? What does it mean that the submission of the "spec" has expired?

The reference links are not working.

Velle 13:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only link I noticed was stale is the Microsoft link. Since you mentioned it in January and it is now September will the primary care-taker of this page please edit that link out?

hhhobbit 20:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CIFS is *based on* SMB ... "CIFS is an enhanced version of Microsoft's open, cross-platform Server Message Block (SMB) protocol" http://www.microsoft.com/mind/1196/cifs.asp

My first instinct was "yes" this page should be renamed, but there are two issues... 1) There are many mentions of SMB that you'd have to modify 2) Actually SMB is NOT CIFS, just a very similar predecessor

At the end of the day the more correct solutions would be either 1) (QUICKER) a single page called CIFS_and_SMB that covers both topics, explaining the differences, with redirects from both CIFS and SMB 2) (BETTER) Individual articles on CIFS and SMB that split the relevant information from this page accordingly, but that both refer to each other and explain the differences

PS: I have checked some of the reference links and from my sample they seem to have been fixed up

Artemgy 16:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SMB is a protocol that's had many updates. The SNIA CIFS spec includes some messages from various versions of the protocol, plus some extensions, and also includes the non-NetBIOS encapsulation atop TCP (port 445). It doesn't include all of the messages that have ever been part of SMB, and I think there might have been messages added to SMB by Microsoft Vista, after the SNIA spec came out.

So saying SMB is "a very similar predecessor" to CIFS is misleading; some of the "similarities" are, in fact, identical messages (not just similar messages), and Microsoft have, I think, made additions to SMB after the SNIA CIFS spec came out (so SMB isn't just a predecessor). Guy Harris 21:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

application-level network protocol

In the first paragraph, it mentioned SMB is application-level network protocol. Is it referring to the application layer in OSI seven layer model?

Stephenchao 05:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)Stephenchao[reply]

According to 3Com's WestNet program SMB is presentation-layer according to the OSI model. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.157.211.23 (talk) 23:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CIFS != SMB

From a wiki contributer on this page: "CIFS is *based on* SMB ... "CIFS is an enhanced version of Microsoft's open, cross-platform Server Message Block (SMB) protocol" http://www.microsoft.com/mind/1196/cifs.asp"

Does this not mean, then, that CIFS should not route to this page, being a distinct implementation of SMB and an entirely separate logical entity altogether? In the least, if CIFS routes to this page, SMB, there should be a mention and helpful explanation of how "CIFS" is linked with "SMB". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.248.57.243 (talk • contribs) 07:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC).[reply]

No, it does not, as it's not an "implementation of SMB" at all; it's a protocol specification of a protocol that's not "an entirely separate logical entity" from SMB, it's just one particular variant of SMB.

Microsoft's SMB IFS and SMB server code, Samba, smbfs and cifsfs for Linux, smbfs in various BSDs and OS X, etc. are implementations of SMB; a protocol specification isn't an implementation. SMB isn't a protocol with a single specification; the original SMB specification was extended with additional specifications. Various CIFS specifications have been issued, such as the one Microsoft issued (referred to by the cited Microsoft article), and the subsequent one from the SNIA at http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/CIFS; the Microsoft spec was largely a subset of the "NT" version of SMB, with a few additions.

So the discussion of CIFS on this page perhaps requires a bit more than just

At around the time when Sun Microsystems announced WebNFS [1], Microsoft launched an initiative in 1996 to rename SMB to Common Internet File System (CIFS)[1], and added more features, including support for symbolic links, hard links, larger file sizes and an attempt at supporting direct connection without all the NetBIOS trimmings — an effort that was largely experimental and required further refinement. Microsoft submitted some partial specifications as Internet-Drafts to the IETF[2], though these submissions have expired.

but that's pretty much what should be here. Guy Harris 19:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So how do CIFS and SMB "not exactly equate to each other"? Guy Harris (talk) 20:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302188.aspx Client systems use the CIFS (Common Internet File System) protocol to request file and print services from server systems over a network. It is based on the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

"Based on" does not mean "equate" If it did, it would make SCO's arguments valid. If Linux is was based on Unix it would be Unix and everyone owes them money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.10.209.1 (talk) 18:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also of the view that CIFS is a new and separate entity. It may be based on and similar to SMB, but it isn't SMB... I note there are separate articles on Wikipedia for IPv4 and IPv6. See where that's going? Supertin (talk) 04:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Although I agree that they're different, a quick google shows enough public confusion that it would at least warrant a cross reference. However, I doubt you could provide enough unique information to make the cross-reference worth reading in both places. I suggest a common article (this one's fine) that has a section to compare and contrast the two. KnockNrod (talk) 19:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs and corruption

It's only a minor point, but I'd also mention that SMB has been a weak point in the MS stack, particularly with the major file corruption problems with the Windows 2000 release (which were fixed in a critical security update, so don't go looking for the patch). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.166.15 (talk) 03:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]