Setting up a linux server.

On 2011-05-20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> David Brown wrote:
>> On 20/05/2011 06:40, Gordon wrote:
>>> Aragorn wrote in
>>> email.me:
>>>
>>>>>>> The three things I want to do with it are:
>>>>>>> - provide a place to put various files that can be accessed
>>>>>>> by any work station.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That's what "/srv" on the server machine is for.
>>>>>
>>>>> As others have said, that's what /samba/ is for. You can put the
>>>>> files in a directory under /src if you want.
>>>>
>>>> Well, he was asking about providing a *place* so I took that literally.
>>>> And Samba is only needed if some of the workstations run Windows. If
>>>> the clients run GNU/Linux, he would be better off with NFS.
>>>
>>> I should be a bit more specific. The workstations are running Win XP.
>>> I'll be adding another workstation latter this year and I'll be the
>>> primary user of that machine. When that happens, I will seriously
>>> consider making that one a linux box. The server is a different
>>> project. I want it to provide network storage to the Win boxes
>>> via the Map Network Drive function. Sounds like a job for Samba.
>>
>> Yes, you want samba here.
>>
>> I often like samba even for Linux-to-Linux sharing - I find it more
>> flexible than NFS, and it seems to cope better if you get network
>> problems. NFS is a bit more efficient, and gives you more Linux
>> features (named pipes, hard links, etc.) - but I haven't found the need
>> for these in networked setups. It's also a matter of taste, experience
>> and convenience.
>>
>
> Maybe things have improved, but I found SMB woeful with linux clients.
>
> I simply hard NFS mount the server at boot and that's that. Its 'there'
> and behaves exactly like any normal mounted file system.

I really haven't ever had any NFS problems. Sometimes apps will hang
if the NFS server goes away, but they tend to continue chugging along as
if nothing happened after the relevant server is kicked in the head. The
only really serious problem I've ever had with NFS is newer Ubuntus with
upstart.

Startup gets hung up with something in the NFS startup sequence not
running perfectly and the whole startup sequence is buggered. Seems like
a cascade of failed dependencies.

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On 2011-05-23, the following emerged from the brain of JEDIDIAH:
> On 2011-05-20, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Maybe things have improved, but I found SMB woeful with linux
>> clients.

Works quite fine these days.

>> I simply hard NFS mount the server at boot and that's that. Its
>> 'there' and behaves exactly like any normal mounted file system.
>
> I really haven't ever had any NFS problems. Sometimes apps will
> hang if the NFS server goes away, but they tend to continue
> chugging along as if nothing happened after the relevant server
> is kicked in the head. The only really serious problem I've ever
> had with NFS is newer Ubuntus with upstart.
>
> Startup gets hung up with something in the NFS startup sequence
> not running perfectly and the whole startup sequence is buggered.
> Seems like a cascade of failed dependencies.

Never had any real problems with NFS either. I have this one file
server at work sharing a bunch of stuff to several GNU/Linux clients,
and it is set up in a fail-over scheme with DRBD. It is no problem to
simply pull the plug on the primary server while a large copy is in
progress. After a while the secondary server kicks-in, takes over the
NFS resources and simply continues with the copy without losing a
single bit.

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