Steven French

With SMB3.1.1 POSIX Extensions now implemented in multiple open-source clients and servers, the protocol has matured to support a wide range of Linux/POSIX semantics over the network. However, as the Linux kernel and its ecosystem continue to evolve—with new filesystem syscalls, flags, and ioctls—further protocol enhancements are needed to maintain parity with local filesystems. This BoF offers an informal forum to discuss priorities for new features, explore support for emerging workloads, and identify performance improvements for key Linux use cases.

Accessing servers from Linux over SMB3.1.1 continues to improve in exciting ways. This talk will explore the latest enhancements to the Linux SMB3.1.1 client, enabling more secure, efficient, and compatible access to remote storage across a wide range of SMB3 file servers—including Samba, Azure (the "largest server in the world"), ksmbd, Windows, NetApp, and macOS. There are also exciting improvements to smbdirect (SMB over RDMA), including making this high-performance path easier to use for both the client and server, as well as userspace applications like Samba.