Proposal to remove netsmb / smbfs

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%me.com@localhost>]

(Cross-posted to tech-kern / tech-net because it affects networking and file systems.)

I would like to propose that we remove netsmb and smbfs.  Two reasons:

1- They only support SMB1, which is an ancient flavor of the protocol.  SMB2 was introduced in 2006 and SMB3 in 2012.  SMB3 is the flavor of the protocol favored by all of the major implementations, and for those that still support SMB1, you sometimes have to go out of your way to enable it.

2- It is not MP-safe.  The effort to make it MP-safe would be non-trivial.

Because of (1), there is questionable utility in putting in the effort for (2).  Therefore, I think it's time we retire it.  For those that really need SMB client capability, there are user-space implementations available that implement newer versions of the protocol that can be hooked up via FUSE.

Thoughts?

-- thorpej