HP-UX HB v13.00 Ch-20 - CIFS

HP-UX Handbook – Rev 13.00 Page 5 (of 40)
Chapter 20 CIFS
October 29, 2013
This chapter will introduce you to the ability of HP-UX to communicate in heterogeneous
networks with MS-Windows-computers. (Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP Windows
2003 and Windows 2008). There are some products which enable data exchange in mixed
environments: there was Advanced Server for Unix (ASU), which is obsolete for HP-UX but still
alive on Tru64-Unix. There is Samba (from samba.org) and the HP CIFS bundle. As we do not
support Samba (besides within a LINUX contract), we'll focus on the HP CIFS software bundle.
The structure of this chapter refers to the recent software versions first and keeps information
about older versions at the end.
Introduction
The Common Internet File System (CIFS; formerly known as Server Message Block, SMB) is a
high level protocol developed to provide advertising of available resources and the sharing of
network printers and file systems. It is developed and maintained by Microsoft Corp..
In its most basic form it provides for a server to broadcast its name and resources, it handles the
handshaking for client to server requests and replies. Broadcasts are generally UDP
unidirectional announcements. It provides necessary overhead for the transferring of files, for
print requests, directory searches and file manipulations as requested by the client. This file and
printer sharing is generally accomplished through high level request/response transactions over
Netbios and TCP/IP. All CIFS packets are recognizable with their leading FF 53 4D 42 (SMB)
at the start of the SMB portion of the packet. This is followed by a hex number that represents
the type of packet (read, open, write, etc.) being issued.
Wireshark, formerly known as ethereal, is a network analyzer available at
http://www.wireshark.org does a great job of formatting network traces for SMB traffic.
Wireshark is also capable of displaying the output captured by nettl, the HP-UX network capture
utility.
If session communication is lost, the client redirector sends a reset forcing the existing session to
be torn down and a new connection to be established starting at the TCP level. Once the TCP
connection is in place a new negotiation takes place and a new session is established. The
redirector does this most times without the intervention of the user. The users request will simply
take longer than normal to succeed. The client and server negotiate the version level of the
protocol to allow for improvements as new clients and servers have evolved. Compatibility is
maintained to allow for new servers to communicate with older server and vice versa. CIFS
protocol is built into all recent MS-Windows operating systems.
Software
The HP CIFS products are available for the HP-UX 11i versions at no charge. The latest version
can be found at http://software.hp.com under the “Internet ready and networking” link. The
products can be use independent from the hardware below the operating system.
 HP CIFS Client (B8724AA; current version A.02.02.02)
allows the mounting of windows-shares onto HP-UX. This functionality is only similar to