I am confused about NFS and need some direction. My goals are simple as I just want to share folders on a local network between 3 pc running openSUSE 12.2 and have them show up in the left hand panel of Dolphin or the network folder.
I was wondering if there is a way to have NFS without the need to configure a specific machine as a server? As this article describes here, gnulinuxclub.org - Establishing LAN among Linux machines near the bottom he describes this as peer to peer NFS. Is this really possible or what.
All other articles I read (openSUSE docs) involve a machine as a server and then clients that log in an share as directed via the NFS server. Well what if the server computer PC1 is not powered on and I want to share files between PC2 and PC3. I understand I can do this via ssh and maybe that is the way to go here.
For example, I would like the ~/downloads folders of all powerd on PC in my local network to be available in the left panel of Dolphin.
?? What would all those users on all those systems say when they would be aware of the fact that you can see everything in their Downloads directory (or any other directory of them for that matter)??
BTW. NFS is of course a server/client thing. The system where the data is stored is the server and the clients can acces that. And any system can run the server, any system can run the client, any system can run the server and the client. The same as in general for all server/client solutions over TCP/IP.
Peer to peer NFS would seem to require making them all NFS servers.
No big deal. This is typical of how Sun systems worked. There might be one or two major files servers, and those were the ones that needed a server license. The others would technically be NFS servers, but just serving home directories so that people could log into any machine and still see their same home directory. Those client machines did not require a server license.
Thanks for the replies, I understand the situation now. I sometimes need to grab a downloaded file off one PC and move it to the one I am currently working on instead of re-downloading. This typically happens when I am out in the shop working and figured it would be nice to have access to the download folder of the house PC. I have no need to worry about many users at the moment.
Dropbox and other similar file storage and sync services.
Use a bittorrent client, configure trackerless sharing, eg DHT or Peer. Can be made private so you’re not communicating outside your LAN. In this situation all hosts are both server and client (peer to peer).
Unison, which is rsync with extra features. No formal server/client, but 2-way sync.
Deploy shared infrastructure like iSCSI. If you were bigger you could go whole hog deploying a shared filesystem instead of simply representing hardware as a shared resource.
I normally use “rsync” or “scp” for that. Either will copy over an ssh channel.
I use publickey authentication in ssh, and I usually add my key to ssh-agent soon after login to the desktop, so that “rsync” or “scp” both become very simple commands to use (no additional password requested).
I understand that each machine could be off… NFS is not much use when the exports are not on the network half of the time. For such cases I’d rather use Network Places (SFTP). In Dolphin / Konqueror / Nautilus.
I have no need to worry about many users at the moment.
It is not that important if you have more users on those systems, the fact that Linux is a multi-users system is an important fact. It means among other things, that when you can see clearly that someting would be a violation of users rights (if you think you have them or not) it most probably is not possible in Linux.
But you probably want someting different. You want access for the same user on different systems.
The others have already advised several solutions for that.
It is not that important if you have more users on those systems, the fact that Linux is a multi-users system is an important fact. It means among other things, that when you can see clearly that someting would be a violation of users rights (if you think you have them or not) it most probably is not possible in Linux.
Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense or logical way to figure it out anyway. So NFS probably not the best solution in this case.
For such cases I’d rather use Network Places (SFTP). In Dolphin
Just set this up for the first time, working great. It seems to fail at using a ssh key file but I will get it figured out. Ths is basically what I wanted, thanks.
Dropbox and other similar file storage and sync services.
I guess this would actually be the best solution considering the PC may be off or sleeping. I really wanted to try and save bandwidth and keep it local but maybe that is just the easiest thing to do.
Another option is to appoint one of the machines as a server, but this would mean it would have to have the diskspace as well. The machine in my signature is on 24/7, it exports /home (and a lot of other things) to all other computers in the house (that only have 40 or 80 GB harddisks). In fact it means that all data in the house are in one place.
On 2013-01-20 20:16, anika200 wrote:
>
> Thanks for the replies, I understand the situation now. I sometimes need
> to grab a downloaded file off one PC and move it to the one I am
> currently working on instead of re-downloading. This typically happens
> when I am out in the shop working and figured it would be nice to have
> access to the download folder of the house PC. I have no need to worry
> about many users at the moment.
I have a shared folder in the desktop machine using nfs. But usually
when I need a file from another machine what I do is start an xterm,
fire up ‘mc’ (midnight commander) and in one of the panels select F9,
Left/Right, “Shell link…”, which opens an ssh session to the other
machine and displays a virtual filesytem tree of that other machine. I
can read/write any file that I have permission with the user I logged in as.
It is the easiest method to copy files without configuration (and would
be safe even over Internet).
An NFS share, of course, allows working on the remote file without
actually copying it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Ha, just tried this and it works great too. I did this with Krusader as well and it works good. Ok now I have more tools than I need now I just need to get a favorite and stick with it for a while.
KnurphtAnother option is to appoint one of the machines as a server, but this would mean it would have to have the diskspace as well. The machine in my signature is on 24/7, it exports /home (and a lot of other things) to all other computers in the house (that only have 40 or 80 GB harddisks). In fact it means that all data in the house are in one place.
I was actually considering this as well. I have an old Via eipa motherboard and some older spare ide drives around I could use for the project.Then I wondered about the logic of moving all my data to older drives etc… If I had some spare change and could get some modern hardware for the job I would probably try it. I still might set it up for backup or such.