Connecting to a Mac

Baryonic Being · 06-05-2005, 05:12 PM

I need to allow my Linux box to communicate with my Mac over a Local Area Network.
That's Gentoo Linux, incidentally, and Mac OS X 10.4.

I don't know where to start, and the Apple help files focus on accessing Windows through SMB. I don't know if I should be able to access Linux in the same way - but if I do try to put in the IP address of the Linux PC with a share name on the Mac, it just loads continuously and eventually gives a data inaccessible error.

Please help if you can.
Thanks.

pilotgi · 06-05-2005, 05:54 PM

I don't use Gentoo but I'm able to share files between my iBook running Tiger and SUSE 9.3 with SMB. With SUSE, I used YaST to set up my SAMBA server. Then I just use the finder in OS X under Go > Connect to Server:

smb://(ip address of your linux box)/user name

That would be the user name with which you set up your Samba server.

Good luck!

Baryonic Being · 06-07-2005, 05:46 AM

Thanks for your reply. I just get:
"Could not connect to the server because the name or password is not correct."

I tried fiddling with the firewall, but now the username/password prompt has suddenly stopped appearing. The connections just time out.

Baryonic Being · 06-12-2005, 07:34 AM

It's working now, but only Mac to Linux. I can't seem to do it the other way around - smbmount times out.

michaelsanford · 06-12-2005, 01:21 PM

Did you enable Windows File Sharing on your Mac in the Sharing pane ?

Also, I find that NFS is a MUCH faster way of sharing files than Samba. NFS is, however, complicated to set up on the Mac since it uses an automounter and not the good old regular 'mount host:/share' syntax--you need to add stuff to NetInfo.

Check out NFSManager in Versiontracker to configure it. See if that works.

But if it's too complex or you run into lots of problems just keep using Samba...

demian · 06-13-2005, 05:42 AM

I'm with michaelsanford here. Go with NFS. samba is just painfully slow in comparisson. If you want your mac to be the nfs server just create an /etc/exports file with the directories you want exported. Then you can mount it in linux like you would any other nfs share. Or if your linux box is the server mount the share in OSX using command-K and under Server Address enter nfs://<nfs server name or IP>/exported/dir