todo.rst

  1====
  2TODO
  3====
  4
  5As of 6.7 kernel. See https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/LinuxCIFSKernel
  6for list of features added by release
  7
  8A Partial List of Missing Features
  9==================================
 10
 11Contributions are welcome.  There are plenty of opportunities
 12for visible, important contributions to this module.  Here
 13is a partial list of the known problems and missing features:
 14
 15a) SMB3 (and SMB3.1.1) missing optional features:
 16   multichannel performance optimizations, algorithmic channel selection,
 17   directory leases optimizations,
 18   support for faster packet signing (GMAC),
 19   support for compression over the network,
 20   T10 copy offload ie "ODX" (copy chunk, and "Duplicate Extents" ioctl
 21   are currently the only two server side copy mechanisms supported)
 22
 23b) Better optimized compounding and error handling for sparse file support,
 24   perhaps addition of new optional SMB3.1.1 fsctls to make collapse range
 25   and insert range more atomic
 26
 27c) Support for SMB3.1.1 over QUIC (and perhaps other socket based protocols
 28   like SCTP)
 29
 30d) quota support (needs minor kernel change since quota calls otherwise
 31   won't make it to network filesystems or deviceless filesystems).
 32
 33e) Additional use cases can be optimized to use "compounding" (e.g.
 34   open/query/close and open/setinfo/close) to reduce the number of
 35   roundtrips to the server and improve performance. Various cases
 36   (stat, statfs, create, unlink, mkdir, xattrs) already have been improved by
 37   using compounding but more can be done. In addition we could
 38   significantly reduce redundant opens by using deferred close (with
 39   handle caching leases) and better using reference counters on file
 40   handles.
 41
 42f) Finish inotify support so kde and gnome file list windows
 43   will autorefresh (partially complete by Asser). Needs minor kernel
 44   vfs change to support removing D_NOTIFY on a file.
 45
 46g) Add GUI tool to configure /proc/fs/cifs settings and for display of
 47   the CIFS statistics (started)
 48
 49h) implement support for security and trusted categories of xattrs
 50   (requires minor protocol extension) to enable better support for SELINUX
 51
 52i) Add support for tree connect contexts (see MS-SMB2) a new SMB3.1.1 protocol
 53   feature (may be especially useful for virtualization).
 54
 55j) Create UID mapping facility so server UIDs can be mapped on a per
 56   mount or a per server basis to client UIDs or nobody if no mapping
 57   exists. Also better integration with winbind for resolving SID owners
 58
 59k) Add tools to take advantage of more smb3 specific ioctls and features
 60   (passthrough ioctl/fsctl is now implemented in cifs.ko to allow
 61   sending various SMB3 fsctls and query info and set info calls
 62   directly from user space) Add tools to make setting various non-POSIX
 63   metadata attributes easier from tools (e.g. extending what was done
 64   in smb-info tool).
 65
 66l) encrypted file support (currently the attribute showing the file is
 67   encrypted on the server is reported, but changing the attribute is not
 68   supported).
 69
 70m) improved stats gathering tools (perhaps integration with nfsometer?)
 71   to extend and make easier to use what is currently in /proc/fs/cifs/Stats
 72
 73n) Add support for claims based ACLs ("DAC")
 74
 75o) mount helper GUI (to simplify the various configuration options on mount)
 76
 77p) Expand support for witness protocol to allow for notification of share
 78   move, and server network adapter changes. Currently only notifications by
 79   the witness protocol for server move is supported by the Linux client.
 80
 81q) Allow mount.cifs to be more verbose in reporting errors with dialect
 82   or unsupported feature errors. This would now be easier due to the
 83   implementation of the new mount API.
 84
 85r) updating cifs documentation, and user guide.
 86
 87s) Addressing bugs found by running a broader set of xfstests in standard
 88   file system xfstest suite.
 89
 90t) split cifs and smb3 support into separate modules so legacy (and less
 91   secure) CIFS dialect can be disabled in environments that don't need it
 92   and simplify the code.
 93
 94v) Additional testing of POSIX Extensions for SMB3.1.1
 95
 96w) Support for the Mac SMB3.1.1 extensions to improve interop with Apple servers
 97
 98x) Support for additional authentication options (e.g. IAKERB, peer-to-peer
 99   Kerberos, SCRAM and others supported by existing servers)
100
101y) Improved tracing, more eBPF trace points, better scripts for performance
102   analysis
103
104Known Bugs
105==========
106
107See https://bugzilla.samba.org - search on product "CifsVFS" for
108current bug list.  Also check http://bugzilla.kernel.org (Product = File System, Component = CIFS)
109and xfstest results e.g. https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Xfstest-results-smb3
110
111Misc testing to do
112==================
1131) check out max path names and max path name components against various server
114   types. Try nested symlinks (8 deep). Return max path name in stat -f information
115
1162) Improve xfstest's cifs/smb3 enablement and adapt xfstests where needed to test
117   cifs/smb3 better
118
1193) Additional performance testing and optimization using iozone and similar -
120   there are some easy changes that can be done to parallelize sequential writes,
121   and when signing is disabled to request larger read sizes (larger than
122   negotiated size) and send larger write sizes to modern servers.
123
1244) More exhaustively test against less common servers
125
1265) Continue to extend the smb3 "buildbot" which does automated xfstesting
127   against Windows, Samba and Azure currently - to add additional tests and
128   to allow the buildbot to execute the tests faster. The URL for the
129   buildbot is: http://smb3-test-rhel-75.southcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com
130
1316) Address various coverity warnings (most are not bugs per-se, but
132   the more warnings are addressed, the easier it is to spot real
133   problems that static analyzers will point out in the future).