My orginal question:
We are looking at using samba for an application. The application
requires use to be able to move files to a pc. Test from the alpha that a
new file has been produced, copy the file back to the alpha. I can see
that samba will work very well for personnel file sharing but I have not
figured out how it can replace nfs. Based on information from the list,
people have summarized that samba can replace nfs. What I want to do is
mount a directory structure on a pc so I can transfer files back and forth
under program control.
Any info would be appreciated.
The answers that I got back indicated that I was looking at the problem
from the wrong side. From the PC side you can mount a drive which consist
of a directory or two. Both the PC and the alpha server can see the drive
and use it. I wanted the alpha to do the controlling of the drive but
that is not possible with Samba. The PC is the one that mounts the drive
and not the other way around. If I had thought about it a little more it
would of come clear, or was it just pride that my alpha can not control
the pc data. Well any way thanks to all that replied, I have selected
several responses for the informational content, while all responses
were helpful the ones choosen help me the most.
Thanks to the following for there responses
Weidong Wang
Robert Schuhl
Guy Dallaire
C.Glenister
Bertrand Hutin
Kris Chandrasekhar
rrens_at_hcia.com
Carlos A M dos San
Tim W. Janes
jim jones
jrjones_at_comsource.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is what I found out (which suits what I need):
>From a PC's point of view, one can claim that samba does repalce nfs,
since from the pc, you can find a unix file system as read and write
fromt here.
But from an unxi box's point of view, it does not repalce nfs. It merely
gives you a way to read and write to a dos partition, without giving you
the mounting functionality.
I use a sparc as a file server and I want to let other machines
(including PC) to share that file server. For that reason, samba works
fine for me;
I have a printer connected to the PC and I want to be able to print from
unxi boxes to that printer. Samba works for me too: I wrote a script to
be run on unxi to print a file, which does the file conversion , then
copy the file to the printer on the PC.
Weidong Wang
---------------------next response ---------------------------
With SAMBA, you will be able to "connect a network drive" from your PC to
your UNIX box. After you have connected your PC to the network drive, you
will be able to read/write data to this drive, when you set up SAMBA, by
default, it creates a network drive for every user, this network drive
corresponds to the home directory of your user. For example, if your
username is 'bobby' and your SAMBA host is 'romeo', you can use the
"connect network drive" option of windows for workgroups and connect to
//romeo/bobby, windows will then ask for a password (in the default SAMBA
case, it is the same as you UNIX password) and if the pwd is ok, you'll
get a new drive (say H:) corresponding to your unix home directory.
You can also set specific shared directories with samba, password
protected or not, that everyone can access.
Note that there is no EASY way for your UNIX host to access your PC. It is
very straightforward to access UNIX from the PC, but the other way around
is not easy to set up. Also not that SAMBA is not the fastest think on
earth, but it is a VERY GOOD PRODUCT and FREE. If you don't move/copy
massive amount of stuff between the PC and the UNIX box, you should have
no problems. Same thing if you don't have a zillion SAMBA connections
active at the same time.
It's so easy to set up that I can access my UNIX home directory via
windows 95 from home with a PPP connection to my alpha BOX ! Not fast, but
it works !
NOTE: You need and SMB capable OS to to this, Windows for Workgroups and
Windows 95 can do this.
Guy Dallaire
dallaire_at_total.net
------------------------------------next response --------------------
My limited experience indicates that if all your PCs have a command
like
net use f: \\nodename\directory
and the directory has been defined as a share in smb.conf, your PCs
should be able to access that
share. Access to that directory depends upon the way you defined
acces in smb.conf.
If Windows95, you can map a network drive to \\nodename\directory.
Regards,
Kris
Received on Fri Apr 04 1997 - 03:07:35 NZST