Samba and NFS need some explanations.

Craig White craigwhite at azapple.com
Mon Apr 10 22:00:18 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 22:04 +0300, Ivan Evstegneev wrote:
> Hi everyone!!!
> 
> The problem is that I still can't understand when do I need to use SAMBA
> and NFS?
> 
>    For example: I have two computers at home one is PC and it directly
> connects to the Internet and the second one is laptop that connects via
> the PC, it can be called the standard scheme for most of the people I
> guess. On my PC Win XP is installed and the laptop has FC5 on it. 
>    So now I want to enable file sharing between those two computers. The
> question is: how do I need to configure all this stuff? I mean... on
> which computer do I need install samba, the PC or laptop or both of
> them? Does it must be Samba-server packet or client will be enough? And
> what is NFS for anyway? When do I use this one? I got totally confused
> about all this stuff... 
>    I don't need some step by step guides or something like that, just
> give me some "global" explanation so I'll try to go on by myself.
> 
> These are the different types of schemes I would prefer to receive some
> info about what do I need to install on each one to get the file sharing
> among them. I wanna try all of these for gain some experience. :)))
> 1) PC=Win XP     laptop=FC5
> 2) PC=FC5        laptop=FC5
> 3) PC=FC5        laptop=Win XP
> 
> *** note: my PC has direct connection to the NET and laptop connects via
> PC.
----
smb (samba is derived from smb) means server messaging block - the
original Windows methodology of networking. If UNIX/Linux systems want
to share files with Windows systems, samba is what you use on
Linux/UNIX, windows networking is what you use on Windows.

nfs (network file system) is a uniquely UNIX/Linux file sharing scheme
and unless you install the Microsoft offering 'Services For Unix' -
Windows is utterly incapable of using this networking methodology.

NFS understands the users/groups methodology of Linux/UNIX systems.
Samba understands the users/groups methodology of Windows systems.

samba has excellent documentation that explains it all - see 'By
Example' here...
http://samba.org/samba/docs

nfs has pretty good documentation...see
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO/

and maybe this link...
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/index.html

Craig




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