file sharing

ME dugan at passwall.com
Sun Jun 3 22:31:06 PDT 2001


(when I started this e-mail, it was going to be short... really!

On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Leif Ryge wrote:
> I have a redhat 6.2 machine with two ethernet cards running as an IP
> masquerading gateway between my DSL line and a small lan in my home.
>
> I'd like to have the linux box also run as a file server, since it will
> soon have a large hard drive in it.

I would assume that this would mean the same box doing IP Masquerading
will also be doing file sharing in the near future...

> The machines on my network are macs and wintel boxes (98 on one and
> win2k on two others), so I need to work with that. From what I've read
> it sounds like nfs would be eaiser to setup than samba, but I really
> don't exactly know what I'm doing. Can I make nfs work with a
> mixed-platform network, or do I need samba for that?

NFS has a history of being insecure, so you will want to make sure your
firewall rules are set to not allow incoming requests for nfs related
connections. Also, for the most part, NFS is mostly used for *NIX to *NIX
file shares. There are 3rd party drivers from Sun Microsystems (and
others) to allow you to connect to NFS mount with a windows client, but I
think they are proprietary. Macs also have a similar system for NFS.
(Unrelated to filesharing here however, Macs can use the Apple Print
Manager to connect up to and talk to an LPR based print server over IP.
(Also, Mac OS X has support for mounting NFS shhares too, but you may find
more security in asun netatalk.))

For the PCs, you might want to examine Samba (and a newer copy as there
were some security holes with posted exploits for earlier copies.) If you
configure Samba to only talk on your internal network interface, then you
may not need to worry as much about having the latest version, but it
would still be a good idea. Samba allows you to have you linux box appear
to be a windows file server. Various forms of authentication exist in
samba. The weakest common authentication is a Windows 95 style of
share-level, and not-as-weak ones move up through to NT-domain-style
user-level authentication forwarding. (You will want to choose the
Standard Samba tree *not* the "Experimental Domain Controller" fork since
that fork is still alpha, and deveopment has come to a crawl. The standard
Samba is very nice, and very stable. (Yeah, I know the thought of running
an NT domain without any windows servers sounds good. :-)

There are at least 3 various forms of Apple Filesharing servers out there.
CAP (Columbia AppleTalk - avoid this as there is better support for
netatalk), the Umich-netatalk and the asun-netatalk. CAP is not so well
supported and is found more often on older systems in places where some of
its functionality are not as well supported in asun-netatalk (mostly
specialized things like authentication etc.). The umich-netatalk was an
early netatalk that does not see much development anymore. The asun distro
is one of the few appletalk filesharing servers that is still doing well
for distro. and docummentation. A guy name A. Sun took the umich netatalk
and forked the project as they were not adding his patches. The asun
distro of netatalk offers AppleShare over IP - unlike the umich netatalk
annd I think the CAP. DID is not presently supported under the stable asun
netatalk, but is being worked into the developmental version. Both are
rather stable, but more documentation that is easy to read is available
for the stable asun netatalk.

Some last warnings:
I do not think Active Directory Service is supported in the stable Samba
release, and I am not sure of its status in the developmental cvs at the
moment. The standard file sharing *will* work to windows for work groups
3.11, windows 95, 98, Me NT 3.51, 4, and 2000. Though the standard Samba
tree does not have full support for MS Windows Domain Model, there is
support to point the samba server to a present NT dmain and and have
authentication pass through to the DC where the Linux Samba server is
acting like a member of a MS Domain.

There have been some reported problems with Mmac OS X Client edition and
connecting up to the AppleFile shares using Netatalk. It works fine for
me, but others on the netatalk mailing list have been complaining about
it.

Lastly, if you plan to run both, on volumes where both mac users annd PC
users will share file access, there are some rules you will want to
enforce in you appletalk file shar config and samba config, as well as
tell your users how to save files.

If/when you get an apple file sharing service and samba installed, bring
up the topic, so we can discuss how to make your life easiier when running
both of them. (I know there are other members of ths list that have/had 
and support/supported both and also came to fnd some sulutions. Between
all of us, we should be able to get a good discussion on this. :-)

-ME




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