RE: [Nolug] Sharing File Systems

Hi Kevin.

Thanks for the info. Yep, I should probably check out the versioning systems
also.

Thanks,

John

   John Souvestre - Integrated Data Systems - (504) 355-0609

  _____

From: owner-nolug@stoney.redfishnetworks.com
[mailto:owner-nolug@stoney.redfishnetworks.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Kreamer
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 6:47 PM
To: nolug@nolug.org
Subject: 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