Discussion on user access: ftpfs, nfs, samba cifs, sshfs, or other alternatives.
 

Hello,

This thread is aimt to discussion on user access for mounting an FS on a disk.
Namely, there are several methods today, i.e. ftpfs, nfs, samba cifs, sshfs, or other alternatives. Most of them need a driver to be compiled into the kernel.

Which one or maybe some alternatives do you recommend, use,... pros/cons?

Samba is slower than NFS.
NFS is likely the fastest for datatransfert?

i use sshfs to mount a remote Linux filesystem, but somehow i always have the feeling there's a different, maybe better way, maybe one that doesn't even require a separate program.

but this way i can do it in userspace, which i prefer.

Everything mentioned is basically a network protocol and in a nutshell allows one to use a remote filesystem like a local filesystem. smb/cifs is a bit more complex. Those that use fuse i.e. sshfs and curlftpfs (ftpfs) which are userspace are going to be slower then a kernel module.

Alternatives depend on what you are trying to accomplish. If just considering file transfers then I use scp, sftp or rsync.

To share the /home, pretty rather to use NFS, since it allows to export the /home and gives the highest speed.

It is important if you'd like to open large files from /home/user directory.