# mount_smbfs error 'server name too long'



## CanOfBees (May 4, 2020)

Hi all -

Thanks for any suggestions or thoughts you might have on this topic.

I'm trying to connect from a FreeBSD workstation to a shared CIFS file store. I've tried several variations of the following:

```
sudo mount_smbfs //canofbees@ab.cde.efghijklm.nop/qrstu$/vwxyz -U canofbees /mnt/deptstore
```
 and in every instance, `mount_smbfs` returns 
	
	



```
mount_smbfs: server name 'ab.cde.efghijklm.nop' too long
```
.

While that isn't the name of the server, the length is exact. I've tried the connection with and without the volume information, and with/without the `-I` argument. I'm stumped -- is there anything else I can try to get this file share mounted?
Again, thanks - in advance!

Best!


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## zirias@ (May 4, 2020)

FreeBSD's smbfs only supports the deprecated SMBv1, so it is practically useless nowadays. If you only need to access a share from time to time and performance isn't that important, you might be lucky with sysutils/fusefs-smbnetfs (disclaimer: never tried that). The better solution, if possible, is to ask the administrator to provide the share via NFS as well.


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## memreflect (May 4, 2020)

Zirias said:


> FreeBSD's smbfs only supports the deprecated SMBv1, so it is practically useless nowadays. If you only need to access a share from time to time and performance isn't that important, you might be lucky with sysutils/fusefs-smbnetfs (disclaimer: never tried that). The better solution, if possible, is to ask the administrator to provide the share via NFS as well.


I agree that NFS is probably the better choice since FreeBSD's Samba client facilities are rather lacking.  I'm not surprised as Linux tends to be the one that needs to interoperate with Windows whereas FreeBSD seems perfectly happy as a Samba server and no updated client capabilities.

The only other option currently is to install net/samba410 or net/samba411 and use the various utilities (see samba(8)) to manually browse shares and directories, copy files to and from machines, etc.; it doesn't do mounting, which makes it a bit awkward to use.

Another option is the recently revived net/smb4k.  It doesn't address CLI mounting of a Samba share, but it is a decent GUI for accessing Samba shares, and I've had success with it in the past.  That said, it has been years since I've used it, and the fact that it was very recently revived means it may not be available as a binary package yet.  It also pulls in a bunch of KDE libs since it's a KDE application, so if you're building it from ports, expect a long build time unless you already have some KDE stuff installed.


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