Re: [TCLUG:11292] How to share a hard drive?

["Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.mn.org>]

On Sat, Dec 18, 1999 at 11:42:48PM -0600, Dave Erickson wrote:
> 
> I have a 2.5 GB Fat32 partition on the Red Hat box set aside for
> this.  My question is, what is the best way to do it?  The other
> machines run Windows if that makes a difference. Would I have to use
> Samba?  Is this possible?  Is the earth round?

	The other answers to this question are correct, but I thought
I'd state them in a slightly diffrent form...

	The simple, short answers...

	Yes, Samba is the way you want to do sharing between Linux and
Windows.

	Also, you do not need to have a separate partition to share
from.  In fact, I would recommend that you not.  Even if you do, it
shouldn't be a FAT32 partition, it should be a Linux native (ext2)
partition.

	And a slight more detailed explanation...

	In fact, Samba is the only way to do sharing unless you want to
by an expensive NFS client for Windows.  And even then, NFS and Windows
have some culture clashes that make things a little hard.

	The reason you want to use a single partition and the ext2
filesystem is that when you share files over a network, you introduce a
layer that completely hides the real type of the filesystem from any
clients.  That's why Windows 95 clients, which have no idea what an NTFS
filesystem is, can still use NTs NTFS filesystem over the network.  In
fact, I've set up Samba on a machine running a version of UNIX called
AIX that doesn't have a clue what FAT is and it worked fine.

	Someone mentioned a Windows NT primary domain controller
problem.  I don't know a lot about this as my delvings into Samba have
been largely experimental.  The primary domain controller under NT is
the thing that handles authenticating users on the network.  I usually
just let the NT system do this, and provided an NT user to UNIX user
mapping in the Samba server setup.

Have fun (if at all possible),
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --

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