How to Create Invisible Link to dir on different server
 

Hello,

I think this may be a simple fix, but I can't seem to ask it right to google or here.

I have a directory on a redhat file server which is getting close to full. I'd like to move the contents of that dir to a windows box, but make it transparent to the many users who save data to the redhat dir.

Not sure if I should mount the windows folder to the redhat? Should they be the same name? Can it be transparent so that my users don't have to change all their settings?

thanks

You would do the following

1) on the file server, move the current directory X contents to directory Y (temporarily). Directory X will now be an empty directory.

2) share a folder X on the windows box (can be the same name as the one on the Red Hat server, but doesn't have to be)

3) mount the folder X on the windows box to the Red Hat server (using either 'smbmount' or 'mount.cifs'; look at the man pages of these for more details). It is given a "mount point", which is your empty directory X on the Red Hat server. Once this is done, anything you place in directory X on the Red Hat server will actually end up on the Windows machine.

4) Copy the contents of temporary directory Y into directory X (effectively moving them across to the Windows machine). If this is successful, you can then delete directory Y.

Step 3 will only mount the folder until the next reboot. If you want it mounted permanently (ie, even after the file server reboots), you will need to place an entry in the '/etc/fstab' file.

Keep in mind this will be slower than serving directly from the Windows box, because you are transferring the files into the Red Hat server, and then back out to the Windows box (presumably over the same network link).

You should also be aware that the file systems on the two operating systems may behave a little differently, particularly when it comes to file permissions and time stamps.

Can you not add another drive to the linux box to expand the storage capacity on that machine?

As neosignal very well said, if you need to mount shares involving Windows boxes, cifs or samba are your best bets. NFS is also supported, but I don't think it works that efficiently.