Re: Replacing NFS with Samba

["Daniel L. Miller" <dmiller@amfes.com>]

Clive Menzies wrote:

> On (29/01/05 16:24), Daniel L. Miller wrote:
>  
>
> > Tom Allison wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > Daniel L. Miller wrote:
> > >
> > >      
> > >
> > > > Can I replace NFS sharing with a Samba server - and still provide the 
> > > > same user rights?
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Daniel
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >        
> > > Why would you do that unless it was only for the purpose of supporting 
> > > Windows?
> > >
> > > There are authentication models for Samba.
> > >      
> > I've been having some major problems with a couple workstations on my 
> > network.  They are setup to mount the home directory tree from an NFS 
> > server.  The problem is, for some reason, the network connection gets 
> > interrupted periodically for a moment.  I'm still investigating the 
> > physical connections - but every time it happens, the X-Windows session 
> > locks up.  I was hoping Samba would provide a more fault-tolerant 
> > environment.
> >    
> Hi Daniel
>
> I've also been looking to replace NFS with Samba (I administer mixed
> networks and trying to simplify things).  On the Linux clients I tried
> smb4k which seemed to work fine for a while and then became quite
> erratic.  I also encountered problems when trying to write to Samba
> shares - it would fail to overwrite an existing file but end up leaving
> a file of 0 bytes.  So until recently, I reverted to NFS.
>
> However, following something I spotted on the list I tried cifs instead
> of smbfs and it seems to have solved the writing to shares problem.
If someone can, I'd appreciate a little explanation about the 
differences between mounting shares as CIFS vs. SMBFS - they seem to be 
the same, and I don't change anything on my Samba3 server.

>  I
> tried smb4k again and it was fine for a while and then seemed become
> unstable.  I am waiting to the alioth 64bit mirror to come back on stream
> so I can try xsmbbrowser instead.
>
> Other than browsing shares with smb4k, samba is performing really well.
> I run openoffice in a 32bit chroot environment and that is
> reading/writing shares with no problem.
>
> In short, using cifs on the clients has resulted in being being able to
> consider dumping nfs.
>
> Regards
>
> Clive
>
>  
What I'm trying to mount is both a common data area, and user home 
directories.  The common data area mounts via smbfs/cifs with no 
problem.  Ideally, I'd like the share to be mounted with the permissions 
of the currently logged-in user.  I don't know how to do that, so I do 
it using the user/pass of the primary user for that workstation.  The 
users are not superusers, and log in via KDM.  My current fstab line is:

//server/data      /data           cifs    
defaults,suid,exec,user=abc,pass=123,uid=abc,gid=domusers   0       0

A similar line for /home did not work for cifs - at least for 
X-Windows.  So I'm still using NFS:

server:/home       /home           nfs     
defaults,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=10,tcp     0       0

But I still have these intermittent disconnect/re-connects, and when 
that happens X-Windows locks up.  This is only happening on one 
workstation - and the complete workstation has been replaced, along with 
a fresh Debian install - so I believe the only thing left is the 
physical connection starting from the workstation patch cord and ending 
with the 10BaseT switch.


Any assistance here would be sincerely appreciated.

Daniel