Apologies if this is not the best forum for this question, but I tried Rackspace & they only want to sell me Jungle Disk, which I tried but I don't like.
I am trying to set up my Ubuntu Pangolin server, hosted on Rackspace cloud, so that it can map to the desktop, replacing my local file server, like an online hard drive.
Installing Samba might be an option although don't know if you would have security concerns about that? Any suggestions you had would be appreciated.

If you do install Samba then be sure to firewall it off to the whole world (including you) and then use ssh tunneling to connect to it. This way it's encrypted using ssh. There's also sshfs (short howto and note Fuse4X has merged into osxfuse). Also, in that case since you're likely going to have ssh open to world so that you can access it anywhere (or at least open to the country you're located in) then check out fail2ban for the server. It's invaluable when you're required to have a port open to world for something like this.

Again... since this is a public server use a firewall. Might I recommend iptables? I use it on my Ubuntu server and it's really easy to set up.

1 members found this post helpful.

thanks thats really helpful, I will have to give it a try. I've seen something called 'Cloudfuse' but does that work in sync with a local Linux server or have I got that completely wrong?
Or the other thing I was looking into was installing Gnome & VNC server, but still unsure whether that will give me a 'mappable' drive at the end...

If you're talking about this cloudfuse then it appears to use the RESTful api to add/remove files from the "Rackspace Cloud Files" solution. Since it is using fuse my guess would be that it does mount a directory similar to a network drive and syncs file objects using the API. Apparently one of the requirements is Debian or Ubuntu (though I'm sure with a little hacking any distro would work) however they don't mention anything about Mac. So you'll likely have to have a virtual machine if you're looking at using this or even run Ubuntu in parallels.

Try not to get confused here. Mapping network drives is much different than a VNC server. You're now comparing apples and oranges where VNC acts like a remote desktop application and not something you can share files with your local Mac OS (just a remote console that is a GUI).

It depends on what you're doing with your "private cloud". Are you looking to stream videos and other media from it or is it simply a storage mechanism for documents and pictures? VNC could work if you're only using it to work on files but in my opinion a mounted network drive would be better because then it would be easy to sync files and have two copies (one on your local machine and one on the server) in case of a remote disaster. You shouldn't depend only on rackspace to keep your data safe as anything could happen I always keep a local copy as well.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, yes I was just thinking about if I kept experimenting with a Gnome/VNC setup I might come up with some kind of workable solution but it sounds like that would be a waste of time.
Private cloud seems like the way to go but I had hoped for an 'open cloud' hardware free solution & some sort of local backup just in case. Like the idea that its 'always up'.

Personally I built a small server in my house (i.e. simple crappy desktop to serve files using samba). I bought a domain name and point it at my IP. I have 99.99% availability because I implement decent system monitoring that emails me when things go wrong. You can access your home stuff from anywhere in the world. You just need to devise a decent strategy to do it.

• http://icinga.org for monitoring.
• http://www.pnp4nagios.org/ for real time historical graphs of monitoring.
• Configure sendmail to use gmail as a relay (assuming you have a gmail account). And then modify /etc/aliases so that all email is forwarded to your address. Be smart and take advantage of gmail filters by filtering them into a label. This way your inbox isn't overly spammed and you can delete the whole queue when you want.
• Use your phone service email to receive text message alerts on really important happenings on your system (such as a drive failing which you'd want to know right away).

It may sound over the top but it's not and really easy to set up. Through monitoring and security you get piece of mind.

1 members found this post helpful.

thanks this is really good info, something to aim for!

Tried http://blog.philippklaus.de/blog/201...8-with-fuse4x/ as advised & it works so I'm really happy with that,
Don't want to call it my new server but its useful as a 'shared online disk', no local files to worry about like Dropbox & could reduce reliance on VPN which is very slow for me.
Thanks again kind person!

One thing I'd like to point out because it's kinda funny. It is your server.

A server serves. A client connects . That's it to the definition :P.

In that regard you can have a computer be both a server and a client. An example would be you have a windows share where you're sharing files on your local network (from the computer you're using). When people connect you're the server. When you're surfing the web from a browser you're the client. So your laptop is both a server and a client in that scenario...

hmmm... after rereading it lost its comedy o.o

No its true, just a bit scared to admit it really, more reassuring to think of a server being some big noisy box within touching distance.