Fildeling
allanadmin, tir sep 11 2007, 20:52

By default, you should be able to see other networked shares out of the box but they wont be able to see yours, these steps will enable your computer to be able to share files on the network.

Using samba:
1.Install PCLinuxOS on your computer.
2.Install samba server from synaptic.
3.Go to kcontrol center->networking->samba, click “administrative mode”, enter root password.
(you need to have kdenetwork-lisa installed for samba to show up in kcontrol center)
4.Click “shares” tab
5.Click “add share”, choose the folder you want to share. Add the name you want the folder to appear on the network on the identifier section.
6.Click? “advanced” tab, on the lower right corner there is a section called masks, change all of them to “0777”. (explanation for this is below, recomending reading it before continuing)
7.Click “OK”.
8.Wait for your new share to show up on your network, you might need to restart samba. If you aren't allergic to the terminal, open terminal and type su, then enter your root password and then type "samba restart". If you are then restart your computer.

While you are on this section, you could personalize your computer name on the network by changing the netBIOS name and server string. NetBIOS name is the name your computer will be broadcasting to the network.Server string is more or less like a comment that you can use to describe the computer.

explanation for step 6
Samba by default gives ownership to all the files created over the network to “nouser” user and to “nogroup” group with 0744 permission. Since, by default, you aren't “nouser” and you don't belong to “nogroup” group, you will only have reading access to them and once in a while, your computer/programs you use will complain about you not having enough access to them.This step will give default read/write/execute permission to all files and folders created. This is the best way to go if those files are going to be shared across multiple account and you want everybody to have full control on them.

You can change default ownership of files/folders created from a remote system to a particular person by clicking user tab(edit shares->users), at the bottom, of the window, there is a "force user" and "force group" options ..change them to a particular user and group and all the files will be created with that user being the owner.

Ways to access network shares.
1.On konqueror address bar, type smb:/
2.My computer ->remote places->samba shares.
3.Using smb4k( networking->remote access->smb4k. When smb4k starts, it should pick up all the computers on the network and their shares( including yours too). I would recommend mounting the shares on your home directory and you can do that my going to settings->configure smb4k and then click on the "shares" and change the prefix to a folder on your home directory.

As of this writing( june 30th, 2006). smb4k wont pick up networked computers if the firewall is on. A networked computer can still be reached by clicking the "search dialog" tab and manually enter the ip address of the remote computer and click "search" and the other computer will show up on the "network browser" tab.

:Using nfs
Install PCLinuxOS on your computer then go to PCLinuxOS control center ->mount points"

1. Allowing folders to be seen over the network.
Click "manage NfS shares" -> "Add" -> "directory" then choose a folder you want to share then click Ok. The shared folder should appear on the list.

2. Accessing a network share.
Click "Create network system(NFS) mount point". IP addresses of all servers should appear on the left, if nothing shows up, click "search servers".Double click the IP address of the server you want to access then click the arrow that appear next to it( on the left side), this will show all folders that server is sharing using nfs. Choose the folder you want to connect to and then click "mount point". Write the path to where you want to attach it and click "ok" then click "Mount" to attach the folder to your file system then click done ..at this stage,pcc will ask you if you want to save the changes to fstab .If you want the changes to be permanent(survive reboots) click yes, if you don't, click no.

If this is the first time you are doing this, PCLinuxOS will offer to install appropriate software that will allow you to use nfs on your system.

nfs is mainly for unix/linux file sharing and windows wont see it by default. Samba is mainly for file/printer sharing btw linux/unix and windows machines. If a network is made up of windows and linux/unix, then samba is the way to go. If a network is made up of only linux/unix, then nfs is a way to go since it is more powerful though for simple file sharing, they aren't that much different from one another.

networking issues
1.Some versions of samba wont transfer a file greater than 2GB.

2.This isn't a samba problem but fat32 file system has a max file size of 4GB. If samba can handle bigger files than 2GB but the destination directory is in a fat32 file system, a transfer of more than 4GB will fail.