Samba vs NFS

[Tom 'Needs A Hat' Mitchell]

On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 06:12:56PM -0700, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> Reply-To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> 
> Hi Guys,
> 
> 	I have a problem. I want to access a shared directory over a WAN link.
> 
> There are 2 methods available to me, NFS and Samba.
> 
> Problem is the Client is a Linux Box, and somehow the idea of using
> samba as a means to an end instead of NFS is a little bit weird (?).
> 
> But anyway, I tried both and it seems that I have more success using
> samba to mount the share rather than using NFS.
> 
> NFS always reports a time-out connecting the server. Yes, there is a
> 200ms lag in ping times to the server box (WAN link)
> 
> However, Samba seems to be able to handle it more gracefully than NFS.
> 
> Ideas?? Comments??

I suspect that NFS is not setup correctly.
  Do both boxes have fixed IP addresses.
  Do DNS lookups work as expected, both forward and reverse are important.
     i.e.:
		dig host.by.domain.name
		dig -x ipaddress.from.above

You should be able to snoop packets on both boxes to see the traffic.
You should see the mount request go out and then arrive.  Firewalls
and port filters may be the issue at one end or in the middle.

NFS is rpc based so rpcinfo should tell you something.

 # rpcinfo -p far.host
   program vers proto   port
    ....
    100003    2   udp   2049  nfs
    ....
    100021    1   udp  32770  nlockmgr
    ....
    100005    1   udp    936  mountd
    ....


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	/dev/null the ultimate in secure storage.