Setting up NFS Network

AudioMechanic · 11-20-2009, 09:31 AM

Hello all. I hope this is in the correct forum. If not, I humbly apologize. I also searched here and Google but did not find something to help me.

I have 3 machines, one runs OpenSUSE 11.2, one runs Linux Mint 7, and one will run (soon) Mandriva 2010.0. I want to network all of their home folders together, all with read/write access and I want the home folders to automount on each machine. So each machine will be both client and server.

Is there a good How-To for setting up an NFS network out there? Or is NFS the best choice? I don't have any Windows boxes but sometimes people come over with Windows laptops and I want to be able to share files with them as well, so maybe Samba is a better option? Maybe both?

Thank you very much in advance, everyone! And, I apologize again if this is in the wrong place or if it's a topic that has been beaten to death.

Have a great day.

damgar · 11-20-2009, 09:56 AM

I use samba as a forward looking Just-in-case. There are many tutorials for samba. I never really have any problems setting it up, but it seems to be a frequent head-ache causer for others.

Mounting smb/cifs directories in fstab isn't any harder than any other directory really. If you mean centralized /home/ directories I have no experience, but just sharing /home/ by default shoudn't be too hard. Mandriva 2009.1 has a good sample smb.conf by default that if I remember right has a HOMES example already. I would assume 2010 is no different. I actually just copied the one from 2009.1 to my slackware's samba directory (yes I'm a cheater) on a multiboot machine and it worked a treat.

PHP Code:


			
#============================ Share Definitions ==============================

[homes]

    comment = Home Directories

    browseable = no

    read only = no

I think it's also an option if you use mandriva control center to setup samba. You could do the general configurations that way (or with the tools of the distro YOU are most familiar with

), copy the reslutling smb.conf across the board and then modify that file on a per machine basis?

Just a thought. It's what I do on my ubuntu/mandriva/slack network for the most part.

AudioMechanic · 11-20-2009, 12:19 PM

Great info! Thanks!

I didn't know if Samba would be slower than NFS since I do have the need to transfer large files (over a gig a piece) as well as thousands of smaller files (like music and pictures).

Thank you again for the reply and for taking the time.

damgar · 11-20-2009, 04:12 PM

No problem. I actually use it to share a 60GB(and growing) mp3 collection, and play all files over the network, plus transfer large directories (5GB+) back and forth, as well as printer sharing. I have never compared it to nfs speedwise, but on 100mb/s wired network it's adequate for anything I want to do,