what distro for a samba server
 

Guys I have a small network to setup cable internet access 6 workstations , they want a server with home folders stored on them all workstations will be suse 9.1 they want the ease of a nt network ie home drives on server ect will samba do it for me? and what distro should I use
I have white box [ redhat ent 3.0 ] I have mandrake 10.0 and suse 9.0 I am open to others please advise

I have samba server set up on MDK 10 and SuSE 9. It was straightforward on Mandrake, and SuSE gave me some problems, but both work well now for my purposes (small home network)

For any server - i'd say a rock solid SLACKWARE .

Definitely Slackware 10, but of course it is personal preference, they all work.

Hold on, hold on! By "home folders", do you mean /home/userid/ folders? Because if that's what you mean, then you do NOT want to use SAMBA! SAMBA does not support the file permission flags *nix assumes in user home directories. NFS does, but it's not so easy to set up.

If by "home folder", you just mean a place where users store personal data files, then SAMBA should be fine.

Most distro's will work fine, but I guess the thing that puzzles me is why use SMB for Linux workstations to store files on a Linux server?

In a heterogenous desktop environment where both Windows and Linux desktops must co-exist, I can see some rationale for running a hack of Microsoft's crummy SMB system on Linux workstations. But here, you are using SuSE on each work station. There are real Unix/Linux solutions beginning with NFS.

Why not use something designed from the outset to work well with the entire spectrum of Unix and Unix-like operating systems?

First, NFS was designed for this sort of thing. Just have their home directories exported via NFS. If they wanted shared folder areas, you can create those as additional exports.

Second, there is no reason to use anything other than SuSE in this situation. Don't complicate the support of the site by mixing and matching distros without reason. The desktops are SuSE, run a SuSE server too. It doesn't have to get any more complicated than that.

By the way people, everyone's input is appreciated, but please remember that when you answer questions in the Enterprise forum, answer in a way that is useful for businesses. Your personal preference or opinion is not going to matter squat to someone who is trying to run and manage a business. Enterprise users want answers that make sense for their situation. Telling everyone to use distro X for every task, simply because it's your favorite is not useful (at least, not in this forum). Showing business people how they can cut costs and manage their IT infrastructure more efficiently is the name of the game.

Suse 9.1 has easy samba 3 and easy nfs setup and use. But u can upgrade samba in 9. Also for setting up user in samba, it is easy with webmin or swat.

I would recommend redhat or fedora as a samba server, its easy to install for any user and is quick to setup.

AbecX, were you not paying attention to the whole thread? The original poster has an all-SuSE environment. There's no point to using Samba over NFS, since there are no Windows clients. There's also no point to use a distro other than SuSE, since that's what the OP already has deployed.

Please read the sticky post at the top of this forum that has instructions for answering questions in the Linux - Enterprise forum. Giving your opinion on your favorite distro as a hobbiest is fine in the other forums, but it is not appropriate for the Enterprise forum. Please read the stickied post to see why.

Apparently not, I'll be more mindful in the future.

Thanks :)