I am looking for tutorials and advice about using NFS and Samba in a small office server.

The server will host Ubuntu Server 16.04.

One purpose of the server will be central file storage. The office systems are a mixed operating system environment with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 and Windows 7 Pro.

Very small office. Currently five stationary workstations with some occasionally connected laptops.

The Windows 7 systems will be updated to Windows 10 later this year.

Of interest is handling UIDs, GIDs, and user account names, which are not the same on all systems. Also of interest is special access folders. For example, a folder accessible only by the business owners and not employees.

At this point I am interested in the big picture and not nitty gritty technical details. Caveats and "gotchas." I am writing a project plan and want to sketch everything on paper.

Thanks much!

Edit: Active Directory is not used in the office.

This looks like a good place to start: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SmallBusinessServer It appears to have some useful links as to specific implentations.

I tried a web search for "configure linux server small business" and many of the top results were a decade old or more, but that search may also be helpful as regards general best practices and potential pitfalls. Those haven't changed, even though some of the software implementation may have.

Will the server be performing anything other than file server roles? If it will just be a file server to the mix bag of end user OSs, than just set up the NFS/SMB server shares.

Keep in mind that SMB does not use file permissions like NFS will. If the file is used by both Linux and MS Windows, than I would encourage only placing that file in a SMB mount/share.

NFS can be very tricky to get setup and running with many of the "how to" guides on the WWW being incomplete and or old. For the Linux to Linux set ups for NFS shares only, excluding the MS Windows computers from those share points, getting the uuid and guid set up correctly on the workstations as well as the servers can and will be a challenge, but once you have it up and running, auto mounting with -bg and -soft (if i remember correctly) will allows for mobile (laptop) linux systems to mount/umount the NFS shares on the fly without hanging either the server or the workstation.

I have not worked with SMB mounts in over a decade, sorry im not much help there.

bunch of links, and it would seem my earlier advice of using both NFS and SMB is not the best option.

https://www.aboutdebian.com/lan.htm

http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/h...-linux-windows

https://www.linux.com/news/using-sam...ux-and-windows

https://websiteforstudents.com/share...ws-10-systems/

https://wiki.centos.org/Download

https://www.tecmint.com/install-samb...ng-on-windows/

https://www.howtoforge.com/samba-ser...on-on-centos-7

Note I included CentOS as well as Ubuntu server for SMB. I have not looked into SMB for Ubuntu as if they are still running SMB v2, v3, or if they have upgraded to v4 as CentOS 7 has.

Running Fedora as my workstation, I am more comfortable with CentOS as they both share a similar structure and commands.

I have used Debian in the past and played with Ubuntu. For me Ubuntu just does not play nice for me. I would personally prefer pure Debian, or the switch over the the RH world. that is just me.

Hope those links help with the small business and get you pointed in the direction you are hoping to head.

That will the primary role. Other anticipated roles:

* Local backups for workstations.
* Nominal office web server with a few static pages.
* Possibly some VirtualBox instances.

With the two Windows 7 Pro systems in the office, seems that Samba is a must. Yet later this year the two systems will be updated to Windows 10 Pro. My understanding is an NFS client now is available in Windows 10 Pro. If that is doable then I think going that direction simplifies things for file serving.

That is my basic take after researching. Use one or the other or ensure the two file server systems can be used in a way to avoid conflicts. Yet now that Windows 10 Pro supports an NFS client, possibly that concern is moot. I haven't yet tested so I don't know what anomalies might exist with the Windows client. The Windows client might be quirky, requiring me to prefer Samba for the Windows systems.

I also have to address UID/GID conflicts. The workstations are not configured with the same UIDs/GIDS. The new server will be configured with certain user and group permissions, such as directories accessible only by the owners.

I set up Samba Active Directory last year, and before that we were using Samba as a standalone fileserver.

First up, consider installing Proxmox or another virtualisation platform on your server. It'll give you a lot more flexibility. You could have a separate container as a testing environment, or if you ever do want to do active directory it's better if the domain controller and fileserver are separate.

(Also, why not use Ubuntu 18.04?)

As a standalone server (not involved in active directory), my experience is Samba just handles things by the username. For each username that needs to access the server, make a Unix account (this may be optional), then set the samba password with smbpasswd to be the same as that used on the workstation. Once that's done, for Windows clients at least it "just works" and the user can open shares on the server without typing in their password again.

Just remember if the password is changed on the workstation, it'll need to be changed separately on the server. If the passwords on workstation and server don't match the user will be shut out (not prompted for the different password). If this will be an issue, an alternative approach is to use *different* usernames on the server than on the workstations, and people can just save their drive mappings and set Windows to remember the password.

You can handle permissions from Linux, they'll be applied just fine to the Samba clients. (And if people ever get errors trying to open files, always check the perms!) You can also use the more powerful (and more complicated) Windows ACLs if you need them. And you can use the share definition in Samba to enforce certain permissions on files created if you want.

I wouldn't bother with NFS. Setting it up is doubling your workload for no obvious benefit. Just let the Linux workstations connect to Samba shares.

Let me know in the thread if you do think you might go with Active Directory, I can tell you what I've learned about that too.

We use Proxmox on our infrastructure servers. I am in the process right now of developing a KB how-to for deployment of Ubuntu Server systems within our infrastructure. The oddity is I had not considered prototyping the small office server in that environment. Would be faster than prototyping on bare metal.

The final server will be bare metal though.

We are using Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on our workstations and laptops. The server won't have a GUI desktop (I likely will install some web browser front-ends for the pointy-clicky owner.) Biggest reason is I haven't had time to tinker and test 18.04. At the bottom of my to-do list right now. That said, as the server will be built new and from scratch, that might be a time to test 18.04.

We are planning a centralized authentication server. I don't know how that fits into the scheme.

We are using NFS right now with our antiquated NAS. Working just fine. I see your point though. I'll have to consider the options when the owner finally springs the funds for the new server (that will replace the NAS).

Not on the conversation table right now, but thanks!