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I had used the iFolder program that was on a Novell server and I must say that program was really slick for keeping folders synchronized. Is there any program out there like it for Linux Server? I would like to use my server as the base and have several locations that would be able to access this over the Internet. The clients would be a mix of XP and linux workstations. Any info would be great.
TP
I'm not familiar with IFOLDER but there are a few things that come to mind in response to your question:
rsync:
This program is used to synchronize directories/files. That is to say you can use it to make directories on one host have the same contents as those on another. It has many options including the ability to tell the target to delete anything that is not in the source so that in addition to copying over new files from the source it will purge any in the target that are no longer on the source. Of course you don't have to use that option but it does help keep things exactly the same. Never used this for Windows but being open source I suspect there's probably a version of it available. This is the one I think you are wanting.
nfs:
This is the standard filesystem sharing tool for Linux/Unix. You run the NFS server on the host where the filesystem resides physically then NFS client on the other hosts so that they can mount the same filesystem. This differs from rsync in that it NFS is a filesystem seen by multiple hosts rather than multiple filesystems kept in sync. There are commercial packages that let you do NFS on Windows but I'm not sure if there are any free ones for Windows.
samba:
This is the Linux/Unix product that allows you to create filesystem shares the way Windows does (SMB). Similar to NFS just doing it the Windows way. Your Windows PCs can mount these shares just fine.
Also of course there are other utilities that just allow you copy individual files remotely:
ftp:
Standard file transfer protocol - not a lot of security
scp (also sftp):
SSL based copy utility - much more security as it uses the same setup as ssh (secure shell). There is a free ssh client for Windows call "Putty" and a free scp client called "WinSCP".
rcp:
Older remote copy utility - usually Linux/Unix to Linux/Unix. Also not very secure.
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