Re: Sharing files on a local network
On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 10:21:17 +0100, Raf Czlonka wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 08:39:58PM BST, Camaleón wrote:
>> > If it's not available through easy install system, e.g APT, then yes.
>>
>> Only Windows system lacks for a ssh client on a default install and
>> this can be easily solved with one of the mentioned programs that don't
>> require even installation at all because they're portable.
>
> I was writing it with Windows in mind indeed.
Okay, but the OP said he wanted to share files between Debian and Ubuntu
so I guess the host will be a linux machine and clients a mix of windows,
solaris and linux :-)
>> > If it doesn't play nicely with the system, then yes. There's no
>> > explorer extension to work with SFTP - that's enough for me.
>>
>> Shell integration on the window client is not a powerful argument for
>> dropping the easier and securest solution, IMO :-)
>
> Most secure - yes. Easiest - no - for this very reason. Let me give you
> an example - you have a server with you film and music collection, and
> you chose to share it using SSH. Windows users will have to copy files
> to their local machines each time they'd like to listen to music or
> watch a film. Not to mention a document which needs editing - copy from
> server to local machine, edit and upload it again. No direct access for
> Windows users is enough of a pain for me not to choose it for home,
> heterogeneous network. Another thing is encryption. Why would you need
> it on every file you access at home-only network?
I fully agree with that specific user case. Of course, if you want to
share your music collection over your home network there are better ways
to do it, even better than having to use a ssh volume ;-)
But that was a bit specific and I was answering to a general question
that was about "sharing a set of files" (the OP did not specified the
nature of the files nor the purpose of the sharing) between two linux
systems. In this scenario, using Nautilus or Konqueror or whatever file
browser is availabe on the computers which support "sftp://"; protocol is
the securest and easiest solution.
>> > Again, for access - yes; not for sharing.
>>
>> The line between sharing and accessing is very thin. For instance, I
>> have a samba share to which I access from my Debian boxes (meaning the
>> samba share is not mounted locally but accessed via "smb://" protocol).
>> That's enough for me because I get/put files on the share sporadically.
>
> We're coming from different points of view. My preference over one NFS
> for unix only machines using one system mount over per user mounts comes
> indeed from enterprise where users' files are located on a server and
> accessed frequently. I still use that kind of setup at home for
> unix-only machines as I don't like to authenticate every time I need to
> access a file.
Yes, but that's another different scenario. The OP did not mentioned
something like "enterprise" or a specific needing (like printing from the
windows client to the linux host, in such case samba can be also useful),
just said "share files between Debian and Ubuntu" or maybe I missed
something in the thread?
> I also use SSHFS (unix-only) accessing files over the Internet, and CIFS
> (unix, Windows) at home as it's better suited for that.
For sharing a bunch of files in your home I still prefer ssh. I use it
this way to put the backup files from the windows computers into the
linux server that holds the files.
Samba (and NFS) can be overwhelming, hard to setup and a true headache
with perms and ownerships of the files. And is less secure. I have a
couple of samba servers at work in two separated networks because we have
a mix of linux and windows machines with "real" printers and virtual ones
(one for PDF printouts and other for faxing) and here -in this situation-
samba (nor NFS nor a SSH volume) does make sense.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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