Re: [Nolug] Sharing File Systems

Call me paranoid, but I wouldn't want to put either a NFS or a Samba server
out on the Internet. SSHFS does have the benefit that you're probably
already running ssh on the servers. If you do go with either NFS or Samba,
then you'll probably need to use some sort of VPN software, as I don't
remember either generally encrypting network traffic.

It sounds like you are mostly working on configuring servers and related
network services. I just wanted to point out that there is a whole class of
software focused on pushing configs from a central location, from things
like puppet, tripwire, and cfengine all the way up to LDAP/directory
servers. They're a bit more of a pain to set up initially, but allows you
to add servers easily and can provide side benefits like increased security
(no one changing configs behind your back), versioning support, and a
centralized place from which to do backups. Just an idea.

Kevin

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 18:59, John Souvestre <johns@sstar.com> wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I have two situations in which sharing the file system on a Linux box would
> be
> handy. I'm looking at NFS, Samba and SSHFS. Any others I should be
> considering?
>
> 1) This application is to allow access from one Linux box (master) to two
> other
> Linux boxes (slaves). The purpose is to allow scripting to keep the
> configs for
> some DNS servers tightly coordinated and easy to change. It's light duty
> as not
> much data will be moved and speed isn't important either.
>
> 2) This is to allow access from various Windows machines to various Linux
> (and
> a couple of FBSD) boxes for miscellaneous maintenance activities, editing
> mostly. I haven't found a Linux editor I like enough to use for anything
> other
> than light editing. :)
>
> In both cases security and reliability must be great as the Linux boxes are
> mostly online servers of various types. All the boxes are on the Internet,
> some
> behind firewalls of various types. Some of the boxes (both Linux and
> Windows)
> will be outside our network thus making a secure connection desirable.
>
> From what I gather, for Linux to Linux I should go with either NFS or
> Samba.
> Any pro's or con's here? I did read some people saying that NFS had
> security
> and locking problems sometimes and that it should be consider obsolete in
> favor
> of Samba.
>
> For Windows to Linux Samba is what I see most mentioned but Microsoft seems
> to
> have a nice NFS client available too, so I don't know.
>
> Then I ran across mention of SSHFS. If I understand correctly, this
> requires no
> setup on the Linux client boxes at all, just SSH. I like this because like
> putting as little as possible on the servers.
>
> SSHFS also plays nice with firewalls which can be a problem sometimes for
> NFS
> and Samba (is this so?). Finally, everything is encrypted which is nice
> should
> a box be outside our network.
>
> I have seen two inexpensive SSHFS windows clients, SFTPDrive and WebDrive.
>
> Any advice?
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
> John Souvestre - Integrated Data Systems - (504) 355-0609
>
>
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Received on 01/02/09