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Data Storage The Internet

How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other? 114

Posted by Cliff from the chatter-in-a-room-full-of-differing-dialects dept.
VonGuard asks: "I'd imagine this is a common scenario out there for Slashdot readers: I have multiple desktops, all sitting right next to each other and all running different OS's. Linux, Mac OS X and 9, Windows 98, and XP. The problem is, despite these machines being only inches arpart physically, in the digital world, they are miles apart. I have no single way to get them all to talk to each other. NFS is impossibly complex, Appletalk is unreliable thanks to netatalk, while PCMacLan, and Samba make me feel like I'm giving into the Empire. Isn't there a simpler way to get files from one of these machines to the other? Right now, I use webservers and write little HTML files that link to the files on each machine. Isn't there a better way to do this?" Is there really a network sharing standard that works across a number of operating systems aside from Samba? Truth be told, Samba "works-for-me", so that's what I us. However, when it comes to simple file copying, sometimes a simple scp is all I need. What protocols do you use in networks that consist of 3 or more operating systems?
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How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other? More

How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other?

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  • rsync (Score:4, Insightful)

    by swdunlop ( 103066 ) <swdunlopNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @07:49PM (#6448196) Homepage
    In my home, there are three laptops that regularly wander in and out of the network, running FreeBSD / Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Mac OS X; I want them to have common access to my projects, and my mp3s. My central file server has an sshd, so I simply use rsync to keep them all in sync with one another. It is a bit wasteful, if all of my machines stayed on the network 24/7, but I and my wife do a lot of travelling.
    • Yeah, definitely rsync. I use it even when transferring files between two Windows machines, because it's faster than SMB.
    • I've never used rsync so I can't compare and contrast, but I'm rather happy with unison [upenn.edu], which is like rsync (I'm told) but different (somehow).

      In my configuration; I run the server on my w2k desktop (with the big drive) and use the unison client from my laptop to sync files (bookmarks, the my documents folder, etc) across the two systems. Unison detects changes and propagates them, if there is a conflict it will prompt you or can even launch diff (for ascii files, you're kinda screwed if it's binary tho
      • Maybe someone who knows better can explain exactly what rsync is and how it differs from unison. Regardless, the original question dealt more with networking protocols than syncronization.

        The biggest difference is that Unison is a bi-directional sync, while rsync is one-way. If you'd read the Unison Home Page, you might see that it's very clearly spelled out there. (There's a decent overview on that page, and the gory details are all in the docs, if you'd bother to read them...

        If you need a syncrhonize

  • Suppression of revolution (Score:5, Funny)

    by PeteyG ( 203921 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @07:49PM (#6448197) Homepage Journal
    How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other?

    Hah, they don't. I don't need the devious little things plotting behind my back. If they can't talk... they can't revolt.

    Unless, of course, my brutal oppression is what pushes them to bloody revolution...

  • Uh.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrunkBastard ( 652218 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @07:50PM (#6448203) Homepage
    well, you could always use that little protocol called "file transfer protocol". Go figure. A protocol used to copy files. Works on every platform know to man kind. If you wanted to pull out a good ol' system that fell into disuse, get gopher working! As a side, there are scp protocols for pretty much everything as well.

    • Re:Uh.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by JDWTopGuy ( 209256 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:05PM (#6448327) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, I agree! Even if you can't run an FTP server on the OS 9 and winXP machines (I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just guessing there's no bundled FTP server), FTP is bi-directional, so it shouldn't be too bad.

      OR you could just add WebDAV to Apache on either the Linux or OS X machine and be done with it all.
      • Windows XP does have IIS which has an FTP server. It is very easy to setup and I have actually used it many times instead of "Network Neighborhood" aka MSamba. FTP works especially well when getting a ton of files or very big files. For the small stuff I stick to samba though (its nice to play mp3s etc off of other machines)
        • I knew somebody would reply with something like this, that's why I said "I'm not saying it's impossible, etc..."

          Is that only in XP Pro, or is it also in Home? He didn't say which version he has.

      • Re:Uh.. (Score:2, Informative)

        by megabulk3000 ( 305530 )
        well, Crush FTP [crushftp.com] is a damn fine FTP server and runs on Mac OS9, OSX, Linux, Windows, OS/2... That might make it a little easier.

    • Re:Uh.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by trompete ( 651953 )
      Parent post is modded Funny, but it's true. FTP is the timeless way to transfer files. You can even get graphical clients/servers for EVERY platform. If you need secure transfers, use SFTP protocol. It's trivial.
      At LAN parties (Windows 9x,XP), we use Filezilla ( link to sourceforge [sourceforge.net]) for all of our file transfers.
      There are clients and servers available for all platforms. In fact, if you're using OSX (you spoke of Macintosh), it has the standard *nix tools included in the install.
      Don't make it harder tha

    • Re:Uh.. (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Yes, FTP always works. But maybe you noticed that it's a pain to use? Even if you're not into GUIs, don't you prefer having one set of file manipulation commands that work with both local and network drives?

    • FTP doesn't cut it (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lightspawn ( 155347 )
      well, you could always use that little protocol called "file transfer protocol". Go figure. A protocol used to copy files.

      But then, whenever you needed to copy a file, you'd have to make sure an FTP server is running here, an FTP client is running there, the directories are right...

      I want seamless integration. I want to be able to refer to remote files or directories as easily as files or directories in a local directory. Is it too much to ask?
      • Um, pretty much every OS I know of supports FTP flawlessly. In Linux an FTP directory appears just as any other directory in the system. WinXP has something called Web Folders, and I'm sure OS X has an equivilent.
      • Sorta hate to say it, but Samba [samba.org] is probably your best bet. It works on all the platforms you mention (don't know about Mac OS 9, though), and is fairly painless to set up on XP and OS X [macosxhints.com], and IMO not too horrible to manage on Linux and others [eatonweb.com].

    • Re:Uh.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kalak ( 260968 )
      Works on every platform know to man kind.

      I laughed when I read this, but you've obviously never had the pleasure of working with ftp on Mac OS 9. No one should ever have to know that much about resource forks just to share files. Ever try to explain that when you d/l from some Mac OS 9 servers from some non-mac ftp clients, the file gets binhex'ed for no apparent reason (even if they don't have or need a resource fork). Thankfully, I'm not at that job anymore, and OS 9 is dying for all but the niche of
    • FTP has a nifty feature that almost noone uses...

      The protocol supports moving files between hosts A and B using a third machine C as the controller. You can use your Win9x machine to order your WinXP and Mac OS X machines to exchange files. That is a good trick to earn some geek points.

      I don't know of a utility that provides this ability, but I've coded it myself. It isn't too difficult to do.

  • You've already given in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @07:50PM (#6448211) Journal
    Face it, you're trying to network 2 MS OSes with 3 non-MS OSes. You want to fileshare between them without "giving in" but you're keeping the non-MS OSes.

    Samba is nothing to be ashamed of. I know plenty of folks who use it with no MS OSes in the mix at all.

    You seem to know it is probably going to be the simplest solution ... yet you exclude it off-hand? Sounds like an exercise in frustration to me.

    • I have opened my Computerus Geekus Bibleus, or Computer Geek Bible for those who don't speak fluent Latin, and it says here, in the Book of "Networking", Chapter 0x03, Verse 0x00, "Thou shalt not use the protocol known as SMB/CIFS on any sort of network, being of Ethernet, Token Ring, Appletalk, or others of this sort, when thou wishest to export thine directory trees, exceptest as thou dost use the Good Software Package that He calls Samba. This Package may only be installed upon thine computers which run some Unix variant, whether they be *BSD, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, or another." So, as you can see for yourself, you don't need to worry about giving in to the Empire! The good book tells you that it is completely alright.

    • Agreed. Just because samaba uses an MS protocol you dismiss it???? even if it works? Screw that. I use Samba because it's easy to setup and all my machines like it.
  • netatalk is open source. If there are problems or shortcomings with it, you can fix them yourself! That's something that can't be said of proprietary solutions (even if they do work off the shelf without hours of configuring).

    • Re:netatalk problems? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      True, but not everyone can hack well - I'm just learning to use Linux, and already, I've come across the same question. I'm okay with Java, but C++ is limited (damned AP course!) and my C is *really* weak.

      And maybe s/he's trying to avoid reinventing the wheel - this has gotta be a pretty common situation. Although I've gotta agree with another poster, why not Samba?

  • Not *that* hard (Score:3, Informative)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:06PM (#6448332) Homepage Journal
    In my last job, I had a Win2K box and a Linux box, and both were on a Novell network. I did manage three-way communication without too much trouble. Windows-to-Netware has standard client software of course. Window-to-Linux was pretty easy, once I figured out how to configure Samba, though that figuring-out took longer than it should have.

    Linux-to-Windows and Linux-to-Netware was quite a bit harder. The SMB and Netware clients that come with most Linux distros are pretty good, but the most obvious and well-documented way to set them up is an ugly kludge where you initialize the clients in a hand-rolled script. I insisted on figuring out how to do it "correctly" by editing the network config files. Took too much time, and I never got it working exactly right. But it was servicable.

    I don't remember most of what I did, but I do have an important hint: on Win2K you almost always want to map a share to a drive, rather than accessing the share directly. Very slow otherwise. I think XP is a little better this way.

    I haven't worked a lot with Macs, but from what I've seen, they're particulary good with file sharing.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:09PM (#6448354)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ah, a Debian user? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tor ( 2685 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:12PM (#6448375) Homepage
    Since you ask right now, you are probably using the 'unstable' branch of Debian (where Netatalk recently broke for Mac OS X clients).

    That's when I decided to dig into the world of NetInfo - the NIS-like information system for Mac OS X. Basically, I now configured my Mac OS X client as a NIS client, which also auto-mount file shares from my Linux server via NFS. It's not that hard to set up, really. A nice side effect is that the network drives perform significantly better than they did using AFP/Netatalk.

    Of course, I also run Samba on my server. If you are looking for a single solution/protocol across platforms, then that's probably the route to go. Mac OS X comes with Samba.

    Then, if you are looking for file synchronization tools (as opposed to network file sharing), let me recommend a little utility called "unison". Runs on Linux, Mac OS X (UNIX), and Windows.

  • SSH & SCP (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jebediah21 ( 145272 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:13PM (#6448381) Homepage Journal
    It comes with Linux (of course) and for Windoes you can use WinSCP (do a google search for it). I know Mac Classic had a freeware SSH app, and with OS X you should have SSH.
    • Openssh for windows has scp too(and other ossh tools, is easy to install and works). Though, as others have pointed out, why not just use samba? It does work, it even works on beos, and looks like the simplest, best, solution.
      • Thanks for the note on Openssh for windows. I really don't use windows unless a friend comes over to my place and needs a file from me. Having said that I find it much easier to just download WinSCP and be transferring files rather than set up Network Neighborhood (which often needs the windows disc). BeOS support is nice but I haven't seen a box running that for over a year now (shame really). Wouldn't it be possible to compile OpenSSH for BeOS?
        • Yes it is possible to compile openssh for beos, and done too. I just keep the beos for fun, as a mp3/irc box it's not bad at all.
          • I kinda wish I had a BeOS machine just for mp3 stuff, but I get along fine with Debian since it can handle all the Norsk characters I throw at it (ø à á æ Æ and more) and has all the mp3 + ogg apps I could ever want all an apt-get away.

  • X2VNC (Score:5, Informative)

    by bite.me ( 189534 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:15PM (#6448392)
    Creates a 1 pixel buffer at the edge of your screen. When you drag your mouse over it, it appears that the curser goes to other monitor, and the control of the keyboard too. Very handy. So with a combination of that, cygwin, samba, and netatalk, I can stay on top of all my files.

    Also, OS-X speaks samba, so there's less and less need for the appletalk protocol.

    • Re:X2VNC (Score:2)

      by XO ( 250276 )
      Hmm.. Very cool looking program. Sure beats buying a KVM switch and cables if you have two monitors... Now, if there's a software solution for a KVM switch.. heh..

  • limitations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AllMightyPaul ( 553038 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:15PM (#6448393)
    You're seriously limiting yourself by not wanting to use those solutions. At work we have PCs, Unix boxes and Macs (running OS 8 and 9). They all have a common directory that they need to access (called 'atalk' for historical reasons). We have three daemons running such that they can all access it.

    PCs: Samba
    Mac: netatalk
    Misc: ftp

    So if all else fails, they can use FTP.

    But seriously, by discounting Samba based on the fact that it "makes [you] feel like [you're] giving into the Empire" is a really stupid reason. If it works, it works and you should use it. I mean, if you really didn't want to feel like you were giving into the "Empire" you wouldn't have a Microsoft box on your desktop at all, would you? So instead of being a hypocrite, just use the solution that works. And remember that Samba is open source, if that makes you feel any better.

    But I suppose you could always use FTP or http://ubiqx.org/cifs/ (but even CIFS uses SMB).
  • It's a bitch, but HTTP and FTP work for file transfers, even if it is with web space as an intermediary.

    On the upside, it works with offsite computers as well.

  • A variety of ways. (Score:3, Informative)

    by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:21PM (#6448444)

    CIFS/SMB for filesharing, since I have 2 Windows machines, and haven't taken the time to learn AFS/Coda. (samba, native windows implimentations)

    Secure IMAP for sharing email. (courier-imap-ssl)

    ssh, scp, and sftp for controlling, moving a few files, and forwarding X connections between machines. (openssh)

    SMTP and NNTP proxies for mail and news. (exim in smarthost mode, leafnode/slrnpull)

    midentd for forwarding identd requests in the NAT.

    iptables for NATting the network, and xinetd to forward posts in.

    Hmmm, I think that covers most of the information that my machines pass around to each other. :) You were probably just looking for imformation on sharing files though.

  • Three letter file sharing is cool! (Score:4, Informative)

    by hrbrmstr ( 324215 ) * on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:36PM (#6448568) Homepage Journal
    Boxen: Mac, Linux, Sun, XP, XP, XP, XP + BSD via vmware, & sometimes Knoppix. Apologies for the plethora of XP..lots of gaming between family members.

    Everything is configured to be an SMB server. Sun, Mac, Linux and BSD also export the shares as NFS servers. SMB, while an awful standard, just plain works thanks to the dedicated members of the Samba team (and all the forks of it). Use it and don't feel "slimy" just cause M$ made it so widely used. NFS isn't *that* difficult. If you've got many different types of boxes, you can easily do a "man" of the necessary stuff under everything but Mac OS X. Do a reply to this if you need to get it going on OS X since it's not as straightforward.

    Three of the XP boxen are really just clients, so they normally pull from the rest when necessary (MP3, AVI, home dirs, etc). Unix boxen (except the Mac) use pam/ldap to avoid duplication and i'm working on getting kerberos to tie (most of) them all together (someday I'll have time). The good thing about network home dirs and central file servers is that backups are a cinch and folks can move from win machine to win machine and retain profiles, etc.

    When I analyze traffic, I pretty much see most of the boxen accessing the Sun and Linux systems since they are the main storage beasts and one has the MP3's *:^)

    One very nice thing about SMB is that it is easily tunneled via SSH, so you can access your shares - securely - from almost anywhere you can ssh port tunnel to/from (it's cake on linux and try the ssh client from netsarang.com to do the same - as easily - under M$...or just install cygwin).

    I have to agree with one of the other posts: the Mac is just amazing when it comes to file sharing compatibility and speed (SMB shares map very fast and it handles NFS as a good BSD box should).

    hope this helps.

  • Give Samba a chance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by elemental23 ( 322479 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:39PM (#6448593) Homepage Journal
    I think you should reconsider using Samba. A couple years ago I started using it at home to make shares on my Debian file server available to my Windows 2000 desktop and laptops and my GF's OS X Powerbook. I've since retired the desktop, shelved the Win2k laptop (it's for sale!) and bought an iBook.

    I briefly considered changing protocols to reflect the absence of Windows on the network but then thought, why bother? Samba does the job well, so why change it? OS X has Samba support built-in so it's extremely easy to mount shares on the Macs, and because we use the same account names on our laptops as we do on the file server, authentication is automatic, making the whole thing almost seamless (I say almost because OS X is still lacking good network browsing capabilities, but we should have that in 10.3).

  • You must give in (Score:3, Informative)

    by mrami ( 664567 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2003 @08:44PM (#6448634) Homepage
    Many moons ago (1997) I was administering a system that was mixed Win95/MacOS8/FreeBSD and had absolutely no problems running netatalk and samba sharing the same FS. This was production w/ maybe 30 users. I still use samba for my home server (BSD/WinXP), and I can't imagine the quality of netatalk has decreased over the past 6 years... At least you'll be able to share.
    • I've been running netatalk on some production boxes for the last 2 years or so, and (after some initial problems, fixed by buying some *decent* 100 meg network cards) we've had _no_ problems.

      OS 8.6 did bomb out now and again, but with 9 and 9.1,things are *solid* (we run about 100 gig of traffic a day through these machines). Throughput makes MacOS file servers look *stupid*.

  • I'm curious as to why the story author thinks that NFS is so difficult and complicated. As I see it, from the set of systems he's listed, the only OS that should give him any trouble here would be Windows, simply because it doesn't have NFS built-in.

    Here I'm running four systems -- three Intel boxes running Linux, Linux, and OS/2, and a mipsel (PS2) running Linux.

    When I started setting these systems up on my network, I went through a similar investigation to interconnect all the systems for file sharing.

    • Not to put words in the poster's mouth, but the reason many people find NFS to be somewhat complex is that the protocol requires user and group ids to be synchronized between the client and the server. If you're talking about two Unix systems, this generally means running NIS, NIS+, or LDAP, each of which is more complex than a standalone /etc/passwd file. If you're talking about a Unix system and a Windows system, this requires an extra mapping facility such as PCNFS, since Windows does not provide compa

      • Not to put words in the poster's mouth, but the reason many people find NFS to be somewhat complex is that the protocol requires user and group ids to be synchronized between the client and the server. If you're talking about two Unix systems, this generally means running NIS, NIS+, or LDAP, each of which is more complex than a standalone /etc/passwd file.

        Nonsense I say! :). You don't need to run any extra special services like this for a small home installation -- just make sure that if a user exists o

      • I thought NFS was also a security risk. To run NFS, you have to turn on a few other services (RPC??) and open more ports.

        There was some exploit related to spoofing your DNS then taking over the NFS share. I know guys that lost machines that way a few years back, so it may be a thing of the past.

        I try to keep only 22 (ssh) open unless I have a samba server running, and then I still try to filter out uknown / untrusted IPs.

        nmap is your friend to see where you have your pants down.
        • Parent is correct.
          As soon as you nfs export something, you're trusting whatever ip / hostname you're exporting to always represent its UID truthfully, and this can be fudged a number of ways.

          Depending on whatever access you allow in the first place, you will allow up to that much at any UID the h4x0R at the client end wants to use.

          NFS requires complete (read: including physical) network security.

  • FTP vs AppleTalk (Score:2, Informative)

    by skamp ( 559446 )
    There are 3 linux boxes and an iMac on my LAN; I wanted some kind of cross-platform backup facility. Between AppleTalk, which required a kernel driver and a daemon, and FTP with PureFTPd [sourceforge.net], which I knew to be easy to install and configure, the choice was quickly made. FTP clients are also quite easy to use, even for lusers.
  • HTTP is probably your best bet.

    I often transfer files to a friend's OS9 Mac from my Linux laptop using HTTP. File transfers the other way are a pain, though I could install netatalk on my laptop or put a simple webserver or ftp server on his machine I suppose. Actually Python has a standard modules for serving http so if I installed Python I could knock up a simple little server, throw in a bit of CGI magic and ...... create a really complicated solution where maybe there were simpler alternatives. Still,
  • It's easy to set up on the UNIX-like machines.

    Add a single entry to /etc/exports, start the NFS daemons (if necessary) and add the remote disks to the other workstations.

    Voila!
  • I have an 80 GB /home on my file server which is exported through NFS and Samba.

    NFS is not that complex. Edit the exports file, restart mountd, and mount it on the client machine.

    Samba is pretty simple to set up through SWAT.

  • NFS? (Score:2)

    by elmegil ( 12001 )
    MacOS X
    NFS and automount: MacOS X knows NFS V3 protocoll (client and server-site implementation, no lockd/statd NFS locking). The automounter has only minor functionality: only direct maps are supported (makes it difficult to implement SEPP).

    Win 98/XP
    DiskAccess Windows NFS Client [simtel.net]

    Linux should be obvious.

  • I'm a sysadmin in an organization that has one of everything (Linux/AIX/MacOS9&X/IRIX/Win*) and we'd like to have our users remember just one password to get on all the machines. We've been using a combination of NFS/Samba/Netatalk for the filesharing, and NIS/ServicesForUnix for the authentication. But this is getting really messy. Any suggestions from the /. crowd?
    • Isn't this what your Kerberos ticket does/should do? Log in once, present credentials, and then present the TICKET from then on?
    • LDAP.

      Pretty much everything (except the MS boxes) will talk to LDAP these days, and MS boxes will talk to Active Directory, which is close enough to real LDAPv3. We use Novell's eDirectory w/PwdSync modules to sync into AD, and then everything else (AIX, Linux, Lotus stuff, Nortel stuff, etc...) talks directly to it. OpenLDAP is another choice, but I don't know if anyone's sorted out the password sync issues between OpenLDAP and AD.


  • Use NFS for the systems that count and Samba for the systems that don't. I don't know about Mac OS 9, but, of course, there's always FTP.
  • Are there programs that let you drag and drop files across Windows, MacOS X, and Linux?

  • Andrew Filesystem (Score:3, Informative)

    by yancey ( 136972 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:43AM (#6450083)
    Of course, this sort of key issue has already been recognized and solved by the open-source community. You should at least take a look at the Andrew Filesystem [openafs.org] which would provide one file sharing system across all your machines. Another good and reliable alternative it to use a Macintosh as a central file repository, since MacOS now comes pre-configured with Samba, NFS, and AFP file sharing.
    • Credit where credit's due: the problem was recognized and solved by IBM and CMU. It was spun off into an open-source project after they'd pretty much stopped making money from it.
  • Just set up one good server running RAID5 with a tape drive, and use it's drives to "share" with the other systems. While a samba server may not be on every single box you have, Linux, BSD, and windows can all mount an SMB share, and that's 99% of your setup for most people.

    SMB is not a bad protocol really, and Linux and BSD both do quite well running it as a server. Solaris, not so much, it's (Solaris') multi-thread preference means that the multi-process samba doesn't run so fast on it for large number

  • Hell, that's nothing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:50AM (#6450111) Homepage
    At least in the example given, you are using all fairly modern machines. The real hacker challenge comes when you want to interface something a little more esoteric - like that nifty C=64, TRS-80 Color Computer, or $DEITY forbid - a shiny IMSAI 8080 you just picked up off of eBay...

    Yeah, that's where the challenge lies. However, even today, kids have it easy: Provided the thing has a serial port and you can code to it, there are small serial-to-ethernet "converters" available (most of them consist of some form of microcontroller acting as a "go-between" from the ethernet interface and the serial port).

    I remember one time in the early 1990's when I picked up a Compaq SLT/386 with 6 meg of RAM, running Caldera's OpenDOS (IIRC). No PCMCIA slots - only a serial port and a parallel port. Since network equipment was still fairly expensive (especially those lovely pocket parallel ethernet adaptors), I looked for a solution.

    I ended up creating a funky bit-banging parallel port solution using 4 conductor phone line, dual jack adaptors, and custom wired parallel to RJ-11 plugs. I intended to write software to allow all computers on this network to transmit/receive on it - checking for the status of the lines to avoid colisions, random wait times when there was a busy, etc - I was looking to get 9600 baud on this thing. I managed to build enough dongles for three machines, but I never got around to the coding portion. Always wondered how well (if at all) it would have worked...

  • My setup (Score:3, Interesting)

    by giberti ( 110903 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:55AM (#6450134) Homepage
    I run a Mac (OSX), Win2k and Linux (RH 8.0) all on the same network. I found that setting up one single standard was next to impossible. I have Mac (OSX) and Win2k Connecting to Linux primarily.

    Initially, since Windows didn't support NFS, I installed Samba and used SMB shares on everything. I found that the file transfers between my Mac and the Linux box were painfully slow (Red Hat 7.1). So I switched that connection to NFS. Its not as bad as it initially seemed to setup. The performance gain was amazing and everyone is chugging away.

    FTP is okay, but if you want a mounted disk for say digital camera images or ripped audio collections NFS and SMB give you that ability with a cleaner interface.

    Don't forget once you get this protocol thing all worked out. If you try to sling 600Megs of MP3's around your WiFi network, its going to take some time still. You might consider getting a nice 10/100 hub or switch if your moving large volumes of files each time you do it.

    Lastly, there are lots of other great ways to move one or two small files around. scp, ftp, http (like you have done), email, and sneaker net.

  • Samba (Score:2)

    by Parsec ( 1702 )

    It came down to Samba for us. We're using Linux as our web server, MacOS X as the design/development platform, and, incidentally, most of our division is Windows 2000. So, we are definitely not giving in to the dark side... When Active Directory goes down in flames, our main web site will be the only one still running ;^)

    There are, however, a couple issues we haven't worked out yet on Samba permissions, but overall it's pretty usable.

  • WebDAV (Score:2)

    by GiMP ( 10923 )
    WebDAV isn't the best protocol known to man, but it might be the most compatable these days.

  • Have a look at OpenAFS (Score:1, Informative)

    by Wee ( 17189 )
    I don't know if this has been mentioned yet (it hasn't been in any of the messages visible at the threshhold I use, anyway), but you might do well to check out OpenAFS [openafs.org]. It does exactly what you say you want. Here's a short description from that link:

    AFS is a distributed filesystem product, pioneered at Carnegie Mellon University and supported and developed as a product by Transarc Corporation (now IBM Pittsburgh Labs). It offers a client-server architecture for file sharing, providing location independ

  • The Obvious(?) Answer: P2P (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Whizzmo2 ( 654390 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @02:01AM (#6450366)
    How hard would it be to install a gnutella client [gnutella.com]on your Windows [shareaza.com], Mac [limewire.com], and *nix [gnutella.com] boxen?

    You know, for an ostensibly geeky audience, this one should have been near the top of the list of responses.
  • I have a computer at campus and one at home. Besides that I have a laptop. When programming I always commit my source code to CVS - in that way I can just do an update from whatever machine I code from the next time. I don't just use CVS from Linux. When coding VHDL it's necessary to move the files to windows and do the synthesis there. Works like a charm.

    Latex files are also easy to commit to CVS and even PDF files (don't forget to use the -kb parameters when adding!)

    For mp3s I simply use Samba - of cour

  • My network has FreeBSD, RH Linux, OpenBSD, BeOS , NT and 2K. By running this configuration for some time I've learned the following that I think is relevant.

    You don't need or want to share everything across all platforms. My kids XBoing scores are not relevant to BeOS or Windows for example. Whereas I need to view my invoices in all but BeOS. My mail is held in Netscape under Windows and Mozilla elsewhere. The files are almost the same but not exactly, making it unwise to keep copying them.

    You need

  • Two problems to solve really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:34AM (#6451631)
    I think that this is really two separate problems. First there is the problem of sharing data and providing universal access to resources in a heterogeneous lan. This is easily solved via nfs, samba (maybe appletalk) or a combination of them all. I think the best approach is to use the right tool on the right box. If your server is Linux or OS X, then export your filesystems and printers on all protocols. On your client, access the resource using what ever works best.

    The second problem is one of synchronization. This comes in to play mostly on laptops that will travel in and out of your network and may join other networks as well. The sorts of things you are likely wanting to synchronize are things like book marks, address books, some working files, etc. Synchronization has the addition complication that for some platforms some synchronized data may need to be imported/transformed to suit the local applications on that platform. The solution to this is much tougher i think. Some possible options are:
    • Store your data on a globally accessible server. ie. save your addresses on directory server, put you email folders on an imap server, ...
    • Use your favourite file syncronization tool such as rsync, unison, etc.
    • Look for/help develop a more sophisticated data synchronization tool such as iSync, kitchensync, ...

    Personaly i'd love to see more work being done in these later areas. It would be nice to use mozilla anywhere and always have the same set of bookmarks synchronized and managed behind the scenes. It's kind of surprising that no one has really tackled this issue.
  • All of my machines speak Esperanto to each other. Just like William Shatner does!

  • NFS is hard? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by op00to ( 219949 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @11:15AM (#6452780)
    On the server:

    echo "/leethaxor/music *(ro)" >> /etc/exports

    exportfs -a

    On the client:
    mount haxor:/leethaxor/music /mnt/music

    Was that so hard? Should work for linux and OSx unless OSX sucks. I'm sure there's graphical interfaces for Win32 and OS9.
  • I have on my LAN a late-model Dell desktop, dualbooting Windows XP Home and Red Hat 8, an 800 MHz iBook dualing 10.2.6 and 9.2.2, a 500 MHz Gateway P3 desktop running Windows 98 SE (and on occasion Morphix), a 450 MHz Gateway Celeron laptop also running Win 98 SE, and a 1 GHz Gateway laptop running Windows 2000 Professional. The two Gateway laptops connect to the LAN by 802.11a. All these machines use SMB for filesharing. The Windows boxes can print on an HP Laserjet 1000 (don't laugh, it's better than m
  • Works in Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, IRIX, HP-UX, and AIX.

    Doesn't work in Mac OS 9. Use netatalk for a while and then consider upgrading your machines. :)
  • I've always preferred CHAOSnet over RFC1149 [ietf.org]

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by sharkey ( 16670 )
    You run Windows XP and Windows 98, and you consider using Samba giving in to the Empire?
  • "giving into the Empire"? Its an open source product implementing a standard protocol.. So what if they also support the various MS extensions out there. If you want everyone to talk together, you have to do it in a way that most of the machines will understand.

    That said, I am in a similar situation at work, but have no problems. My primary workstation is win2k, and my secondary one is OS X or OS 9 depending on where i'm booting any moment, and over there *points* is a red hat (blah) box. I have no difficu
  • I have winxp, 2000, and mac os X machines. They just all use windows file sharing. I forgot what version of os X started supporting it natively. There are programs like dave or sharity to use with older versions of os x. I used sharity before and liked it a lot. I'm *gasp* not too familiar with linux network and file sharing so I couldn't tell you if you could use win file sharing on it. If that's not an option I'd agree with other posts by recommending ftp.

  • Unison (Score:2)

    by obi ( 118631 )
    Unison is pretty cool, it's like two-way rsync, and works over SSH.
  • Just use what they have on common. An implementation of TCP/IP a piece, so use the next level up (ie. FTP, HTTP). Or samba, its not too evil.
  • If your computers are all next to each other, you can alwasy combine text-to-speach with voice recognition. Imagine your Mac OS9 box reading an 'enlarge your penis' e-mail in the Bad News voice to a Windows box that has Via Voice installed. Not high bandwidth, but entertaining!
  • No reason not to trust or use samba. I'm using samba on my two linux boxes, Thursby Software's DAVE which allows MS-style SMB networking on my Mac OS9 box, and native MS-networking over TCP/IP on my WinXP, Win200, and WinMe (don't laugh) boxes. Don't have OS X and my old iMac is a bit underpowered to upgrade, but if I had it I'd probably be using samba with it - doesn't it come with OS X now?

    Everybody's happy, everybody's talking, the old POS WinMe machine in the livingroom is playing MP3s coming from my L

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