smbfs not installed by default

[Michal Suchanek]

smbfs must be installed for samba and cifs shares to work.

It is true that gnomevfs might be used to browse samba shares but
 - not all software is linked with gnomevfs and thus this method would fail for many uses
 - not all guides for mounting Windows/NAS shares would take Ubuntu specifics into account
 - the absence of the package is not reported in any clear way

   # mount -a
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //placka/share,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
       need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program)
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail or so
[ 3509.709576] CIFS VFS: No username specified
[ 3509.709588] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22

 - the package is very small and does not include any active service so the risk of installing it is very low

Note: there is bug 24815 which is against samba which might not be the place to fix this and bug 31523 which requests that missing smbfs should be more obvious

This happens in Ubuntu 2009.4

[Scott Howard (showard314)]

Thank you for your suggestion. However, the changes you are requesting aren't really a bug and require more discussion, which should be done on an appropriate mailing list or forum. http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists might be a good start for determining which mailing list to use.

Also, try opening an idea at:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

I agree and am marking this confirmed, and this should have importance: "wishlist."

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Since this is not a bug but a suggestion to change a core structure I'm marking it as "Invalid". If you want to discuss this you could -- like mentioned previously -- create an idea on Ubuntu Brainstorm, reachable via <http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/>, or open a thread on the Ubuntu Forums, <http://www.ubuntuforums.org/>. Alternatively, you could send a mail to the appropriate mailist, an overview can be found at <http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists>.