I am looking at using Linux as a fileserver for windows clients.
I can find all manner of details specifying how to connect Linux to Windows but
not Windows to Linux.
A lot of the SAMBA information I am finding seems to be quite dated.
Also interested in any tales of woe trying to use Linux as a fileserver with Windows,
specifically in environments where MS Office docs are opened and saved which always
seems to be an issue.
I suppose it depends on your end user needs, which you should share. Is
it safe you assume you want to create some kind of mount within windows to
the Linux box over the network that is always writable, some sort of
network drive? Samba can do that for the SMB protocol easily enough, and
while the docs may be old they are also probably correct. Setting up
Samba is simple enough for a normal workgroup type of scenario.
Alternatively, you could use SCP (SSH-based copying) to move files around.
windows, as is typical, doe snot come with any great tools for this by
default, but there is good stuff out there like winscp that will let you
have nice drag/drop access to your server.
Chances are that your best bet is to go with Samea, then create users with
Samba for all of the people who need access, and go from there. You can
give them their own personal space, or shared space, or whatever. modify
the windows environment to automatically mount these however that’s done
(GPO, login script, whatever) and hopefully they can enjoy a pretty
seamless environment.
–
Good luck.
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
show your appreciation and click on the star below…
We are a longtime Netware shop so users would need
The drives will need to show up under Windows Explorer so that files can be open/saved/dragged/dropped.
End users cannot function with SCP/FTP
What you outline is what I need, but I am unable to find a source that is accurate, current and provides enough
detail to accomplish what I need securely and without massive registry hacks on windows.
This is a proof of concept I am working on, if it fails I’ll be looking at licensing something commercial.
It just seems odd that SAMBA is still so complicated to get going. Even SLES doesn’t have a straightforward
configuration utility.
It’s a while ago, but I managed to setup a proof of concept for such a situation using Yast’s Samba server module. IIRC the only thing I had to do “manually” was adding the smbusers.
On 04/18/2016 12:26 PM, GofBorg wrote:
>
> We are a longtime Netware shop so users would need
> 1) A private home directory accessible only by them
> 2) A shared directory where anyone can Read/Write
Have you tried Open Enterprise Server (OES) 11 or 2015? It’s the upgrade
path from NetWare, and definitely does what you want. It’s also based on
SLES, so somewhat similar to what you’ll get with openSUSE at the OS
level, but at the enterprise level with a lot of additional tools to make
it easier, for example a directory (eDirectory) powering everything rather
than a Samba database that needs manual work for each user.
> What you outline is what I need, but I am unable to find a source that
> is accurate, current and provides enough
> detail to accomplish what I need securely and without massive registry
> hacks on windows.
You’ll need SOME kind of hacking on windows in order to get drives mapped;
I do not know of a way around that without using what you already have,
which has the Novell Client (probably) for that purpose.
–
Good luck.
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
show your appreciation and click on the star below…
AFAIK,
Issues are no different than connecting to a Windows Server.
On Windows file systems,
There is a standard “check out” process where the first User who opens a shared file directly has read/write permissions, and “locks out” any other Users who connect so their access is only read-only.
This is to prevent file modification conflicts, where 2 or more Users may submit modifications which might require merge conflict logic.
Linux/*NIX does <not> have this requirement at the system file permissions level, but is often implemented at a higher level to similarly avoid file change conflict.
If you want to allow multiple Users to have read/write permissions to a file simultaneously…
HTH,
TSU
> Have you tried Open Enterprise Server (OES) 11 or 2015?
Yes I have done some testing with OES. The question has always been the
level of commitment the product receives from MicroFocus (formerly Novell).
I was a beta tester for OES back in the early days when Novell was Novell and it had legions of problems
compared with Netware that it was supposed to replace so it was a non-starter.
OES has also lagged behind its SLES brethren in many regards.
It still does and without maintaining a perpetual licensing contract you lose access to critical
updates. Again, a cost benefit analysis for a small business, if all it is being used for
is as a central file repository, well there are many options for that. The question is which is
easy to use, reliable and doesn’t break the budget.
Thanks for the insights.
EDIT I should also mention that most of our employees have been here for 15+ years so I don’t
have to deal with employee ‘churn’. eDirectory is nice, but is a bit of overkill for our needs.
Still no replies with any info regarding connecting windows PC’s to Linux servers? Is it really that complicated or
did I post in the wrong place?
Think I found a good place to start. If anyone else stumbles on this thread, start here:
5 minutes after finding this thread, I established my first usable share.
Good luck!
-G
Maybe others weren’t clear on what you wanted to do. Anyway, since it turns out you wanted to know about setting up a samba server, there’s loads of how-to’s online…
https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/reference/html/book.opensuse.reference/cha.samba.html