I have set up a home server with a Samba share I'm accessing from my laptop. Both machines are running Linux.

When I copy a text document to the server, it appears both from the laptop and on the server as a binary file, not a text file. When I copy it from the share to another directory on the laptop, it once again appears as a text file.

Can anyone explain why this happens and how to fix it? I would like to be able to click on the text file in the share from my laptop and have it open in a text editor automatically as it would if on the local hard disc.

Thanks

Can you explain why you think this text file now 'appears' as a binary file?

Linux, for the most part does not rely on extensions to determine file type. The most valid way to determine this is to use the file command; like this.

'file somefile'. The system will look at the file and report file type. You can do this locally, or ssh into a server, and do the same.

I don't think there is anything to fix.

Other OS's do use the extensions to report file type, linux does not.

Could you tell us the file system type you are using on the server for samba? Is it a standard linux file system, or is it NTFS or fat32?