[ale] public sharing of folders on linux - newbie question

[JD]

Samba is for communication to NON-UNIX machines or where file owner, group and
other permissions are not important.

NFS is the native way to share file across UNIX machines. Most deployments are
dependent on static IPs, but I think you can use kerberose credintials if you
need more controls.  Root will need to setup NFS on both sides and carefully
manage UID/GIDs to prevent the wrong ownership/group.  I wouldn't use NFS over
the internet unless it were read-only shares that the entire world can access -
like gatekeeper.dec.com of history.  This is like anonymous FTP.

For an end-user controlled solution that can use over the internet, but also has
some drawbacks, there is sshfs. This is a FUSE solution, so it is not high
performance and doesn't support all the native UNIX file system capabilities. It
does use ssh, so all traffic is encrypted.

There are other solutions too, but ... you probably don't want the headache of
installing and running a full DMS like Alfresco which can talk CIFS, NFS,
WebDAV, or provide a web front-end.

On a LAN, I'd use NFSv4 with Kerberose if I managed all the boxes.
Otherwise, sshfs.

UNC is easy depending on the client.  sshfs://, cifs://, smb://, but I've never
seen nfs:// anywhere.

To be fair, MS-Windows is more about convenience than security. Linux and UNIX
have different philosophies.



On 01/25/2013 09:29 AM, Narahari 'n' Savitha wrote:
> Friends:
> 
> I am going to draw analogy from Windows here.
> 
> In Windows if I have machineA and has a folder called outgoing I can share that
> folder for public access (as in I dont care who access that within the LAN
> everyone can copy from/to that folder)
> 
> On machineB I can then do \\machineA\outgoing and access files/folders from that
> location.  I may choose to MAP it or I dont have to.
> The UNC way of accessing is quite handy in email s and stuff.
> 
> ==================
> 
> Having said that, what is the equivalent of that in Linux (between Linux computers)
> 
> If LinuxMachineX has a folder /home/developmentuser/goodstuff and I want to
> share that so anyone in the world can access that folder what is required of me
> to that ?
> 
> On the same line another LinuxMachineY has to access the LinuxMachineA's folder
> what is to be done by LinuxMachineB ?
>