cifs-utils

The cifs-utils package provides a collection of utilities for working with SMB/CIFS network file systems. These tools enable mounting remote CIFS shares, managing credentials, handling ACLs, and performing SMB-specific operations on Linux systems.

Key use cases include mounting Windows file shares on Linux, managing Kerberos authentication for secure access, displaying and modifying NTFS ACLs on CIFS mounts, and retrieving SMB quota information. The tools are essential for Linux environments that need to interact with Windows file servers or Samba shares.

This package is particularly useful in mixed OS environments where cross-platform file sharing is required. It supports advanced features like SPNEGO authentication, keytab usage, and SMB2/SMB3 dialects for modern Windows servers.

cifs-utils operates as userspace helpers for the Linux CIFS kernel filesystem client. Tools like cifs.upcall handle kernel upcalls for request-key operations, managing Kerberos session keys (cifs.spnego keytype) and DNS resolution (dns_resolver keytype). mount.cifs implements the mount protocol using SMB/CIFS dialects, supporting authentication mechanisms like NTLM and Kerberos. ACL tools (getcifsacl, setcifsacl) translate between CIFS security descriptors and Linux permissions. smbinfo uses CIFS IOCTLs to query SMB-specific file attributes.