Setting up Samba is not painful at all. Samba has flexible options that you can configure to satisfy your needs. In my experience, configuring Samba is as easy as sharing a folder on a Windows Explorer (the basic configuration, at least). I've even benchmarked a share on a Windows and a share on Samba and I guess you know who won.
Samba works well in Linux as it is in Windows. Although, I've never really tried to setup an NFS server, transfer speeds across a 100Mbps network, I guess, won't hurt using a SAMBA for file servers. On Wed, 2003-01-29 at 11:36, Andy Sy wrote: > 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] _ 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]
