In a heterogeneous environment where Windows machines have to coexist with Linux ones, Samba is almost always the better choice because it avoids a lot of configuration tediousness and expense that you would otherwise have to do on the Windows machines (I'm referring mostly to installing 3rd party NFS clients/servers). But I've also heard of people using Samba on an all Linux network. Considering SMB is a pretty complex protocol [1], is this advisable? I've used NFS on a mostly Irix network, and the experience was certainly less painful than setting up Samba[2].
So the question is, when should you use Samba and when should you use NFS? I've also read about some newer higher performance alternative network file systems that are available on Linux. Has anyone tried these out and what's the verdict? An experienced sysadmin friend of mine said he would still use Samba on an all Linux machine 'coz he had a hard time getting NFS to work across subnets (?).... how true is this? Also, which of the two has better performance and is the difference significant? ========================================================== [1] I even recall reading somewhere how Samba creator, Andrew Tridgell, lambasted SMB for its cruftiness and advised everyone to stay away from it as much as possible (!). [2] They really should put more in the FAQ about that durned IPC$ issue, I had to drudge up newsgroup posts to tackle an otherwise simple problem that was easily fixed by: security = user map to guest = Bad Users guest account = ftp Ssome people, out of ignorance, and bec. there is nothing in the Samba FAQ about this absolutely frequently encountered problem end up using the less secure "security = share" option just to get things working! There is a vast number of people out there who just want to use Linux for workgroup computing, something the Samba maintainers and doc writers don't seem to acknowledge - as it is initially set up to be very unfriendly for this purpose. Security via (documentation) obscurity ends up encouraging people to less secure setups, not to mention wasting a lot of their time. Actually, the best place to put the above settings would be as a sample entry in smb.conf. Oh well... at least I ended up understanding a little bit more about how Samba works because of this, like what the IPC$ thing is all about - a problem that also happens when connecting Windows 9x clients to NT based ones and has to be solved in a similar manner. _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
