Microsoft Has More SMB3/CIFS Enhancements For Linux 5.16, Including For Performance

Another batch of SMB3/CIFS client changes were submitted and merged today for the Linux 5.16 merge window. Plus the KSMBD changes were also merged today for that in-kernel SMB3 file server.

Steve French of Microsoft as the CIFS/CMB3 maintainer sent in this latest batch of "fixes" - although this secondary pull request wasn't limited exclusively to traditional fixes.

Making this pull request more noteworthy is that there is a performance improvement around SMB3 compounding by making use of open handles where possible. That performance improvement comes thanks to Microsoft's Shyam Prasad.

This pull also has improvements around reconnect and multi-channel behavior, code clean-ups, not error out on fsync when in read-only mode, and code preparations ahead of planned improvements to come in future kernel cycles. Thanks to Microsoft engineers along with SUSE's Paulo Alcantara for this latest round of SMB3/CIFS client work.

See this merge for all the details on the latest changes.

Separately, the KSMBD changes were also merged today. Merged last cycle for Linux 5.15 was KSMBD as an in-kernel SMB3 file server. For Linux 5.16 there are no major feature changes to that code but its pull consisted of code clean-ups and fixes.