NFS vs Samba for home server

srunni · 08-10-2008, 09:47 PM

Hi,

I have a headless server in my home that I store all my files on. I need a way to access the files from other computers on my LAN (all Linux). Some of these files will be very large. I have control of all the computers on the LAN. Would NFS or Samba be a better choice for remote file access?

Thanks!

chrism01 · 08-10-2008, 10:37 PM

Normally if its all Linux I'd go NFS. Samba is primarily aimed at enabling MS to talk to Linux, although Linux-Linux is possible.

srunni · 08-10-2008, 10:38 PM

OK, I'll go with NFS then. Thanks for the help!

userlander · 08-10-2008, 10:48 PM

In addition to what chrism01 said, samba also has more (and better) security options. So if that's important in your situation I would go with that. Otherwise, I agree with NFS all the way, it's much easier to set up and use, imo.

srunni · 08-10-2008, 11:32 PM

No, I don't think security is a problem. I only need read-only access to the data anyway.

jschiwal · 08-10-2008, 11:37 PM

If you are retrieving video files, nfs will work better for Linux/Linux filesharing. You will be able to play a video file as if it were a local file. With samba the file will cache before playing. NFS works better if you will edit a file on a share. NFS uses byte range locking.