Hey everybody!

As many of you probably already know, in very new to Linux... I'm looking for recommendations on how to share files.

I mostly need to share between just Linux machines, but will have the occasional Windows laptop connect to the network that will need access as well..

I'm thinking I will need to setup Samba? Do you guys have any tips for me? I probably don't need to make the files private (requiring a username and password) as they aren't confidential files. But if this is the method I should use, how will I create accounts? Would I have to actually create a user account on the system?

I'm assuming these files would be shared using a network folde if I go the samba route?

Is it better to setup an actual file server? There shouldn't be more than 1GB that needs to be shared so I'm thinking I can just set this up on the box that serves the printer.

Any help or recommendations are greatly appreciated...

Thanks

Yes, you will need to set up Samba to enable file-sharing access between Linux and Windows machines.

A web search for "set up samba" will reveal many tutorials, too many for me to pick one to recommend. Some distros include GUI tools in their control centers for enabling samba sharing.

Thanks for the reply... I'm sure I'll be able to find documentation to help me get going... I'm really looking for tips things to avoid during setup...

Thanks again!

Hi! A couple search keywords you might add are: simple|beginner|tutorial "no password"
A couple config questions: are you sharing only specific directories? Writeable by world=any=all?
(one "trick hack" I saw was to make everything under shared-dir writeable by guest user nobody!)
Good luck. When done, post a solution for future searchers to use!

Or you could follow the link in my post . . . .

Samba is, by now, a very full-featured SMB-client implementation that Microsoft knows all about (and, has contributed to), because it is used on Windows networks worldwide.

Although Windows by now also "talks other network languages," such as NFSv4, I happen to think that it works best with its own networking stack: SMB. Although "Windows has come a long way," it is still a very tightly-integrated system with dependencies and issues hidden all over the place which are really not worth confronting.

You should be careful to set up Linux so that it understands and abides by all of the security provisions of the Windows host network. (For instance, if you're using Open Directory based authentication, which is simply LDAP under the hood, Samba understands all of that, too.) Linux can and should be a full participant in the Windows-hosted network.