Re: [LUG] Samba - not the dance

On 17 September 2012 18:22, Neil Winchurst <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have been searching the web some more and it is obvious that Samba is
not what I need. So I have been looking at NFS, but it all seems over
complicated to me. Perhaps someone on the list could point to a simple
set up or perhaps I am asking too much.

I expected to find a simple way to set up a system whereby my daughter
could link to my computer from her laptop via the router connection
which we have already and then just look at the files in a particular
folder on my hard drive. Well, what do I know?

In my example I referred to some photos I had taken. They are on my
desktop because I can prepare them for her using the Gimp. She is not
interested in doing that for herself, so the images might as well be on
my hard drive from the start. It is obviously going to be simpler for
her to sit at the desktop and view the photos there.

When we had the chat about Samba I did not realise what was involved. I
should have known better. Sorry to have wasted people's time,

Neil

Certainly didn't waste my time, I've recently converted a headless home server to Ubuntu Server and was after a way to browse from my (Debian) desktop, so this thread was very well timed. I followed Gordon's instructions, couldn't get the folder to automount on the desktop (but I think I know what I've done wrong) however I can mount it via the command line. In brief, I did this on the server (which in your case would be your desktop):

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

sudo nano /etc/exports

in this file I inserted the line from Gordon's email - /home 192.168.1.*(rw,no_root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check), amending the * to 192.168.1.* so that it's only browsable from machines on my network (possibly unnecessary, but it seemed a good idea)

sudo exportfs -a

Then on the desktop, as I say the /etc/fstab went a bit wrong but I created a folder in my home folder called 'server_home' and now entering 'sudo mount [IP address of server]:/home /home/jason/server_home' mounts the home folder of my server in the folder I created. My example is probably a bit confusing with all the 'home's but the first one is on the 'server' (in your case your desktop) and the second one (the '/home/jason/server_home') would be on your daughter's laptop

Hope this helps,

Jason