This module, cifs, is a filesystem that implements the SMB/CIFS protocol, which is the
protocol used by Windows based operating systems (including Windows 2000 and its successors)
as well as Samba, OS/2 and many others operating systems and network file server appliances.
The Cifs VFS filesystem module is designed to work well with servers that implement the newer versions
(dialects) of the SMB/CIFS protocol such as Samba, the program written by Andrew Tridgell
that turns any Unix host into a file server for DOS or Windows clients, as well as Windows NT,
Windows 2000 and its successors.  It is not designed to handle older smb servers well, those that
implement older versions of the dialect (such as OS/2 or Windows 95), for this purpose use smbfs.  

This module can support mounting without a mount helper program.  The mount syntax is:
        mount //server_ip_address/share_name  /mnt -o user=username,password=your_password
where "username", "your_password" and "server_ip_address" and "share_name" should be replaced
with specific values (supplied by the user) e.g.  
	mount //9.53.216.16/public /mnt -o user=jsmith,password=openup  

This cifs implementation is designed to handle network caching (safely) as well as to implement locking,
large file (64 bit access), distributed file system ("dfs") and other advanced protocol features. It
also implements the SNIA standard for Unix extensions to CIFS (when communicating with servers such as
Samba 2.2.3 or later which support it).

For more information contact sfrench@us.ibm.com

Cifs is an SMB client (or gateway). For more info on the SMB/CIFS protocol and Samba, including
documentation, please go to http://www.samba.org/ and then on to your nearest mirror.  For more
information about the cifs vfs, go to the project page at:
	http://us1.samba.org/samba/Linux_CIFS_client.html
