Re: Filesharing on small LAN
On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 10:22:31PM +0100, Lars wrote:
> Hey
>
> I'm running a small LAN and is a bit lost in the question regarding a
> simple filesharing on a small LAN...
> NFS: I don't get it. If anyone plugs into the lan and have a
> root-account they are on the share.
NFS requires each file server to statically configure (in /etc/exports,
see exports(5)) the shared directories -- usually this is /home.
Clients can mount either the entire directory, or any subdirectory
of it. This also must be statically configured, or anyway, from the
client perspective it works just like an on-disk filesystem mount,
requiring either root intervention or an fstab entry. Linux NFS is
pretty unreliable in my experience, randomly failing in spite of
network connectivity every couple months or so -- but I haven't used
it seriously in a while (since 2.4.10 or so maybe), and it may have
improved. (I've waited for some improvement since 2.0.30-something and
gave up even checking in the 2.4 series, but who knows -- maybe a kernel
hacker somewhere started caring about NFS).
> SMB: Works sometimes with linux, but often time-out with
> xsmbrowser/gnome and etc. It always works flawless with WinClients, but
> that's it.
I've no experience with SMB.
> I hate to said it/use this expression, but i'm looking for a simple MS
> peer-to-peer/small AD, just in Linux. I properly missed something...
"MS peer-to-peer/small AD" is greek to me. Can you be more specific
about your needs?
Sorry to say it, but Linux filesharing is really not where it should
be, and I think there is no established system allowing automatic
discovery (other than Samba). Coda comes closest, making it pretty
easy to disconnect and reconnect servers, but they still need static
configuration. Coda is relatively complex, though. 90% of the time
automatic discovery is unimportant and NFS suffices. Exactly what data
do you want to share, and where is it (on one machine or distributed
across several)? Do you have to share data that will sometimes be
unavailable to the network (e.g., stored on laptops)?
You might also want to look into unison, which can somewhat-
intelligently synchronize home directories (or whatever you share)
between intermittently-connected machines. This replaces the need for
filesharing altogether, for many needs.
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