On Sun, May 21, 2006 at 03:28:03PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Sun, 2006-05-21 at 08:36 -0500, chrisisbd@leary.csoft.net wrote:
Does anyone have any experience of using a network drive with Linux? Nearly all the reasonably priced ones I have seen advertised tell you all about how they appear as a 'local drive' on Windows systems but give no clue as to how/whether they will work with Linux.
Not had much direct experience of them, But I'd imagine most of them are running Samba. If you went for one of the ones with a vibrant community driven alternative to the included Embedded OS (like the Linksys "Slug") then I'd imagine that NFS etc is a given.
One actually appears to be running Samba but that still isn't ideal for Linux.
While I'm asking, if I press an old system into service with a basic Linux OS installed on it how can I network its drives? Can one just mount drives across the local network or does one *have* to run something like NFS or Samba?
You make running NFS sound like a chore :-)
Well it is! :-)
Nope not really, you can transfer files by various methods but I'd say for Linux to Linux NFS is the way to go. NFS does just mount drives across the local network, you need something between the network and the filesystem to allow concurrent access etc.
What I'd do is build a basic box plus NFS, plus Samba (if you have any Windows clients), perhaps put your printers through it and if you don't have a router then your internet connection as well. Later on you can have it processing your mail etc voila a simple home server for free (or at least much less money than a Nas appliance box)
I already have a dedicated Linux (Slackware) system that is on all the time. It already processes mail (postfix) and has Samba running. What I'm after doing is putting a remote disk drive (or Linux box) in one of our garages as a backup system. The more distant of our two garages is thirty or forty yards from the house so in a disaster (fire, whatever) is most unlikely to be damaged as well as the house so it seems a good place to put a backup system. We run a small Ltd. company and have some other data which I would be very sad to lose.
If command lines aren't your thing then install webmin and the appropriate plugins for what you want to manage.
Command lines most definitely are my thing, that's why I run Slackware.