Hi,

I've got 2 debian/KDE desktops, 1 debian server that's dmz'd. (serving a spam filter, minor apache2 traffic and some other remote services) and one Mac laptop at home.

I would like to have a LAN file share for the two KDE desktops and the Mac. Connecting to the file share has to be easy from the mac and the KDE desktops. (high wife-acceptance-factor) The bonjour thing didn't work at all between a mac and one of the linux desktops.

Is webdav the right tool for the job? What file sharing protocol can you recommend?

Thanks

The easiest and will always work is SAMBA. If you do not plan the configuration right it will broadcast on all NIC in the computer. The next one is NFS which is similar to SAMBA. NFS can tunnel through SSH for added security, I think. Third, WebDAV is harder to setup and access because of the setup and different incompatibilities between the server and the client. There is FTP. I suggest use vsftp because it is not heavy, it is easy to configure, and secure.

I too recommend using Samba, it's easier to configure than the other ones mentioned (in my opinion), it has better security than NFS if I've understood that right, and it works on multiple operating systems, not just Linux/UNIX-variants. Later it's easy to add Windows machines etc. if you need. Samba is configured from command-line on the server-end, but there are some graphical interfaces for that also; webmin could be one, though I don't guarantee it's the best at all. If you remember how easy it was to browse the file shares at your school's Windows network, it's just that easy (and in case you haven't seen it: it's easy).

You know I didn't even consider FTP. I work with Samba a bit already and I'm not thrilled with the idea that my dmz'd server will be broadcasting file shares.

Thanks for the suggestions.