Does anyone have advice about the choice of Samba, NFS, etc and authentication in a KM home environment?

I have about ten different boxes in my house (a k a secondary heating system... ) running different Linux distros and Windows(XP,2000). They share files using Samba (various versions) with a fixed username/password, which works pretty well although not very secure. See it as a workgroup setup.

Now, when I tried to transfer movies and stuff from the KM box to my central repository (a k a file server... ), I discovered that Samba limits the file sizes to 2GB , making it useless for movies, and that my fixed username/password setup makes it impossible to retain ownership etc on the files.

The question is whether Samba really is ideal for file sharing and should get tuned somehow to overcome the current limitations, or if I'd be better off with NFS, AFS or whatever.

The boxes all have local users and no LDAP, Kerberos etc. Maybe something smart could be done here to make them all work in beautiful harmony?

I'd be most grateful for any thoughts on this topic.

Cheers,
/Chris

_________________
LinHES R8.6.1
BE: AMD64X4, 4GB, Hauppauge usb tuners
FE1: Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4, nVidia GT640
FE2: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H, AthlonX2 4850E 2.5 GHz, 1GB, ASUS GEFORCE 7200GS 256MB
FE3: Asus Eeebox410

What operating system and file system (ie: FAT, EXT3, NTFS, etc) are you using on your central repository? A 2GB file size limitation sounds like the old FAT file size limitation.

Marc

The central repository is running Mandriva 2007 with jfs for file system. This isn't a file system issue - there are larger files there. Copying a file over returned a file size error and the file was chopped at 2GB.

The question is if there is a golden path.

Cheers,
/Chris

_________________
LinHES R8.6.1
BE: AMD64X4, 4GB, Hauppauge usb tuners
FE1: Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4, nVidia GT640
FE2: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H, AthlonX2 4850E 2.5 GHz, 1GB, ASUS GEFORCE 7200GS 256MB
FE3: Asus Eeebox410

See http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/OpenSlu ... dWithSamba , look for the lfs option to enable large file support.

Personally I would use A) FTP or B) rsync to transfer the files (in that order) as these protocols are faster than smb. rsync is about as fast as smb if using encryption, which I don't as the systems are both within my LAN. FTP is the fastest way on my network.

FTP and rsync are fine for transferring files, but not for file sharing. KM can't mount a remote directory with FTP or rsync (rsync uses an underlying protocol-in my case Samba... ). I'll edit the original post to clarify.

I would particularly like to use the export utility to store recordings I'd like to keep. The KM disk is limited.

Cheers,
/Chris

_________________
LinHES R8.6.1
BE: AMD64X4, 4GB, Hauppauge usb tuners
FE1: Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4, nVidia GT640
FE2: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H, AthlonX2 4850E 2.5 GHz, 1GB, ASUS GEFORCE 7200GS 256MB
FE3: Asus Eeebox410

I thought that's what you were trying to do?

AFAIK, rsync is it's own protocol - See http://everythinglinux.org/rsync

I use NFS mounts to access my centralized media. No problems with it so far. http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=NFSHowTo

I would use NFS for sharing the drive between linux systems and Samba to make the drive visible to windows systems. I suspect you will see better performance copying files via NFS vs. Samba.

Edit: One more note. I notice that the NSLU2-Linux wiki referenced in a previous post suggests that it is better to use CIFS instead of Samba. I've worked with both CIFS with "freenas" and Samba with both knoppmyth & "openfiler". CIFS has a reputation of having lower performance than Samba. My experience was that CIFS under freenas yielded 25% lower throughput than Samba under Knoppmyth. Samba under Knoppmyth yielded the same performance as Samba under Openfiler.

Marc

I personally use SME Server (formerly E-Smith) it is a linux server with built in Samba server and authentification etc. You can use NFS with it as well and is all managed through a web page.

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Girkers

I have been able to move files > 2GB via Samba. Works like a champ. Tapeworm is also effective.

_________________
R7.3: 0.22.20091023-1, Hauppauge PVR-500 (Philips FQ1236A MK4), Gigabyte Gigabyte EG45M-UD2H, E5200 2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GEFORCE 256MB

It appears that people are using different approaches and are happy with the results. I am unable to see any particular golden path to file sharing/authentication and maybe I should just stick to Samba and straighten out the quirks.

I'll be sure to check this out - thanks!

/Chris

_________________
LinHES R8.6.1
BE: AMD64X4, 4GB, Hauppauge usb tuners
FE1: Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4, nVidia GT640
FE2: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H, AthlonX2 4850E 2.5 GHz, 1GB, ASUS GEFORCE 7200GS 256MB
FE3: Asus Eeebox410