On Tue, 2006-04-18 at 11:00 -0400, Neal Becker wrote: > I was hoping to switch from nfs to cifs on my linux systems to get away from > the need to sync uid/gid. I am surprised to find: > > uid=arg > sets the uid that will own all files on the mounted filesystem. It may be > specified as either a username or a numeric uid. This parameter is ignored > when the target server supports the CIFS Unix extensions. > > I don't understand why. I thought getting away from this obsolete model > (needed to sync + identify users on different systems by uid) was a feature > of samba. > > Is there a workaround? > > These are all modern linux systems (clients and servers). > > The uid=arg is a work around. cifs/samba type file systems do not have the same kind of permissions that unix type file systems have. As such the uid=arg option allows you to force the ownership of cifs type file systems so that your linux system can manipulate those files as the designated user. If you are in a pure linux network using NFS is the best bet. As you have found syncing the uids and group ids across all systems will make things operate much easier. You normally achieve this by using ldap, nis, or a similar directory service.
