Hi everyone,

I am a senior undergrad student, we have an ethernet consisting of around 30 PCs, most running windoze, and some running Linux (Fedora Core 3). We are plagued by the problem of some users sharing explicit content on their PCs. To overcome this, we have to come up with a solution. (or, the authorities have asked us to do this, or pack up the LAN)

The major problem is that the network is peer to peer..all the PCs are connected to each other with hubs and dumb(non-programmable) switches, there is no central control.

To overcome this, we are thinking about NFS. We imagine that it would help if NFS was implemented so that there would be one virtual drive shared accross the whole LAN, so that everyone would have to add the data he wanted to share to this drive, and this could be monitored centrally on one of the PCs running Linux.

1. First of all..is doing this feasable? Is it a good idea?

2. If its possible..how do we interface NFS with the windoze machines (if im not mistaken, windoze has something analogous called VFS ?)

3. Any better ideas?


By the way, we want to manage the LAN somehow through the Linux PCs..We are fed up of windoze with its locked doors and costly add-ons.
We can dedicate a PC solely to this purpose.
We cannot change the network topology.

Thanx in anticipation..

Mayank

If you enable sharing, there is not true way to filter share content, the more restrictive you
will be, the more imaginative will be the users to bypass you rules...

Thats not an option..we HAVE to enable sharing..and we HAVE to monitor it..i see the possibility of users getting smart as an opportunity to learn more, not as a threat. Itl be a good workout for everyone.

Could you explain your problem more simpler ?

As I understand you :
- Users do actually share porn content
- You want to avoid that

I can't find out of my mind an automatic way to know what sort of content users are sharing, you have to do it by hand.
In the case of NFS share, you have to mount all exported FS to browse the shared content.
In the case of FTP server, shares are centralized in only one server, users upload the files to a machine to share it.

that is correct...uv got it bang on

there seems to be no automatic way to control who shares what. the aim is to have centrally manageable storage space..so that when detected, such content could be deleted by the admin..the admin would, of course, have to check the content periodically..

the ftp server has a drawback that we just have a 40 gig hdd in the comp that wud act as the server.