Sharing a Samba file service with Linux clients

[JonR]

I have an FC2 box serving an anonymous Samba file service to my network of WinXP clients. I'm now beginning to replace the WinXP clients with FC3 clients. Security is not an issue, ease of use is. The Samba/Windows stuff works great, everyone can read and write to the server without any problems. Is there a way I can get the server to offer the same directory for read/write access from Linux clients?

JonR.

[johnnyq]

you might want to go with something more native to linux like NFSv4or even AFS

[jim]

Depending on which desktop environment you go with
KDE
you could get a app called fish It's likle windows explorer but on steroids
For example, in konqueror

fish://username@hostname/path/to/things

Will, after getting a password from you, show you the directory listing
of /path/to/things on the remote computer hostname, with you "logged in"
on the remote computer as "username".

That directory listing follows all the same semantics as a local
directory listing, you can delete files (according to the privs owned by
the username you "logged in" with on the fish:// line) drag and drop and
so on.

It doesn't need KDE on the remote computer either, so you can get all
these convenient powers of management in local konqueror even on a
headless server in another country. Really cool!

Gnome
Simple way
Through nautilus
type network:// in the address bar window and everything that is shared
out will show up. Just browse from there like you would Network
Neighborhood in That Operating System That Must Not Be Spoke Of.


Bit trickier but very simple with wath is already installed

From Nautilus go to File> Connect To Server. For service type: choose
FTP SSH SAMBA or whatever. Then fill in the boxes with the proper
information and viola, you have a nautilus window connected to the PC
and an Icon on the desktop. If I remember correctly


You may have to uncheck sshd in the sytem security-level to allow that service to get throught

[Ned]

Yes, users can access the samba shares from linux no problem. I think you'll need the samba client package installed. There are a couple of ways you can access:

From konqueror (KDE), you can ebter the following in the location bar:

smb://machinename/sharename

Once connected to the share, you can bookmark the location for ease of use. I'm guessing you can do something similar if using gnome.

Alternatively, you can auto mount the samba share directly onto your filesystem during boot by adding an entry to your /etc/fstab file (don't forget to create the mount point first). Something like the following should work:

//machinename/sharename    /mnt/samba    smbfs    auto,user,rw,iocharset=utf8,uid=username,gid=groupname,fmask=775,dmask=775    0 0

^^ Ignore the space in "groupname" - don't know why it keeps putting it in there

And like suggested above, once all the windows clients are gone, switch to something like NFS.

Ned

[Ned]

Originally Posted by fedorajim

Depending on which desktop environment you go with
KDE
you could get a app called fish It's likle windows explorer but on steroids
For example, in konqueror

fish://username@hostname/path/to/things

Fish, in konqueror, uses the ssh protocol, so you'd need ssh server installed and running. This is a nice method but not always the most appropriate. Firstly, it requires password authentication and will then give full user access to the whole system (depending on permissions for that user) in the same way as a shell ssh login would rather than restricted access to the samba share directory. Second, because it's over ssh, the connection is encrypted making data transfer a lot slower than a samba share. I typically only get 1MB/sec over ssh/fish and 6-8MB/sec over samba on a 100mbit network.

Ned

[JonR]

Thanks for you replies everyone.

Originally Posted by Ned

And like suggested above, once all the windows clients are gone, switch to something like NFS.

This looks like a neat solution. Do I have to wait until all my windows clients are gone or can I use NFS alongside Samba on the same directory?

JonR

[Ned]

I don't know if you can simultaneously share a directory using NFS and samba - I suspect this may be asking for trouble.

I wouldn't anyway. I don't like running two services when one will do. Firstly, the extra service is eating resources and secondly extra services represent added security risks.

I'd just use samba as long as you have windows clients on your network. You could continue to use samba even once all the windows clients are gone, but NFS would be the more natural choice for an all *nix environment. No reason why you couldn't just stick with samba though as you already have it set up and running.

Ned

[JonR]

Thanks for all the advice.

I have got smbclient running ok on the Linux client and can mount the file service without any problem. But... the files in the file service are all shown as read-only although I can create a new file from the Linux client and save it onto the file service. However, as soon as I try to edit it I find that it has become marked as read only.
Everything works fine from the windows boxes. The file service is an anonymous samba read/write fs. What is happening to convince my Linux client that the fs is read only (even though it can create new files successfully)?

Any advice much appreciated.