[ale] Networking Linuxboxes

[Brian Pitts]

Marc Ferguson wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Thanks again for the replies.  What I want to do is mostly file 
> sharing.  We are on a switch and sharing the Cable connection through a 
> Linksys router.

Hi Marc,

You've stumbled across one of the many areas of linux where there is 
more than one way to do it.

The default method of sharing files in Fedora is gnome-user-share. You
can find this in System -> Preferences -> Internet and Network ->
Personal File Sharing. When you enable this, it creates a folder named
Public in your home directory, starts the Apache HTTP server with the
WebDAV module enabled for that ~/Public folder, and advertises Apache
using Zeroconf mDNS (you might have heard Zeroconf referred to as
Bonjour or Avahi, these are the names of two common implementations). 
This will now show up anywhere that uses mDNS to detect services. I 
believe that GNOME and KDE's file browsers, Nautilus and Konqueror, 
support both connecting to WebDAV and mDNS service discovery with Go -> 
Network -> 'network:///' and Network Folders -> Network Services -> 
'zeroconf:/' respectively. It should also work from Mac OS X's Finder. I 
know Windows Explorer can use a webdav share, but I think you would have 
to manually specify the ip address and port. Perhaps Vista now supports 
mDNS; I don't know.

The default method of sharing files in openSUSE 10.3, from what I can
gather, is a program called giver. In some ways it is similar to
gnome-user-share (it advertises itself over mDNS and transfers files
using HTTP), but it can only share files with other users running giver. 
I don't know if giver has been packaged for Fedora or Windows.

Since you do need to share with Windows, Samba seems like the best route.

The easiest way to get started with Samba in Fedora is to install
system-config-samba, which you can then access from System ->
Administration -> Samba. You'll want to set the workgroup under
Preferences -> Server Settings to match the workgroup you set in
openSUSE. You need to add a Samba user for your account under
Preferences -> Samba Users. Now You can add shares with the Add Share
button. Depending on what folder you try to share, SELinux might
complain and prevent Samba from doing it. I hope I won't be flamed if I
suggest turning off SELinux.

I can't provide detailed instructions for openSUSE because I don't have 
it installed right now.

You can connect to Samba shares easily with Nautilus or Konqueror, or
you can install mount.cifs (formerly know as smbmount) and mount Samba
shares like any other linux filesystem. In Fedora this is in the package
samba-client.

-Brian