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File Sharing w/ OSX


Alydyn
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I am very much a Linux newbie, so this may seem like a stupid question but I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.

 

I am running a Mac OSX-Panther Video editing station which obviously chews through hd space like starvin' Marvin. I need a way to efficiently share the nearly a TB of hard drive space I have available to my linux computer with my Mac. Unfortunately, despite having a fair amount of networking experience I cannot get the Mac to see the Linux computer, and vice versa. Ironically, the Linux computer can see the PC's on the network. Ideally, I could have employee's "log on" to the linux file server and retrieve their specific set of work files. Alternatively, I would be happy if I could just do any sort of file swapping between the two OS'es.

 

I am running 9.1, and on the Mac I have OSX 10.3 (Panther-it's a G5).

 

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks in advance.

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Do you have file sharing turned on on the Mac?

 

OS X uses Samba to share files between a Mac and PCs. So, my guess is that in order to get file sharing working between the Mac and a Linux machine, the best way to do it would be by using samba. Set everything up like you would to share files with a PC and you should be able to see and connect to the Mac and vice versa.

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Do you have OSX assigned to the same workgroup as the Linux box? My SMB browsing at home didn't work well at all until I went to Directory Access (in the OSX Utilities Folder) and assigned the correct workgroup and WINS server. Especially in 10.3, samba browsing seems to be MUCH improved.

Edited by retcynm
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I'd not even play with samba Id go straight for NFS....

When you say the Mac can't see the Pc's what do you mean.

 

 

Open a terminal (im assuming you installed the root account under OS-X) and type

ifconfig

this should tell you your netowrk interfaces etc.

 

Now do the same on the PC's...

You need the same IP range and netmask on each,

How you change it through the GUI on the mac ive no idea but you can do it with ifconfig from a root terminal.

 

once you can ping thelinux boxes from the mac and visa vera you are almost ready....

make sure you have nfs srvr install on the linux box (if not urpmi nfsd)

and then add the exports to /etc/exports

(see man exports for the format)

 

The simplest way is webmin but you can edit the file by hand too.

after do

exportfs -ra

and the linux box is exporting to the addresses you specified then from the mac you can just mount

You might need to prompt a mac with the optional -t nfs

man mount for details

nfs is purer than samba which is a layed protocol and since you are unix to unix should be faster which is all important for those video files :D

 

All serious stuff is done with NFS... I got 100's of TB of data (really) all on NFS !!!

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You don't need to enable the root acount to use ifconfig in OSX. If you want to change settings with ifconfig, ie... ifconfig en0 down, then you would preface it with sudo . it will then ask for your admin password. If you just want to find out what the current settings are, then you can use ifconfig without sudo.

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omg.. all you linux gurus go straight for the heard ehh : O)

 

Any way go into system preferences and go to sharing and turn on windows file sharing. then on the mandrake box or ect ect use linhood ( networking browser. ) and look for your network. when you see your computer click on it and brows with user put in your user name and pass then press enter then mount it : O) simple..

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I don't have ever set up anything like this, but I would think nfs is also better ..since like gowator mentionned samba is a layer on top of filesystems. If the machines you need to access the pc with can mount nfs, I suppose use nfs ...?

 

But it is up to you surely sinc eI never did anything like this ...

 

Of you can also access samba-shares through konqueror or nautilus if you use those .. install the samba/smb extension if you want it, if not already installed.

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Its worth noting that you can share the same directory with both SAMBA and NFS. The WinBlows boxes can access via SAMBA but the Mac can do straight NFS....

NFS is very simple, it just needs a route, you can even set it up via IP instead of host and then it doesn't even need DNS !!!

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nfs may be faster, but smb works in OSX straight out of the box. Just do like everyone says above for enabling windows filesharing. click on the desktop and make sure that the finder is the foreground application, and click >GO< >CONNECT TO SERVER< then type in:

 

smb://ipaddressofyourlinuxbox

 

you should be able to connect to your default share on your linux box then. you can change your shares to fit your needs on the linux box.

 

as long as samba is configured properly on the linux machine, this should be a piece of cake.

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ezroller or anyone :D

The reason I keep hammering NFS is for this particular situation.

In particualr its the fact is a TB of video data ...

 

samba is probably much easier (well if typing mount <hostname>://<sharename> <mountpoint> -t nfs is difficult....) but given the situation I think this should be a proper NFS share ...

 

samba is fine for the home and if you need to talk to windows ... but it doesn't pass the locking data etc. (and quite a bit of other stuff)

 

If someone wanted to just have access to their home then thats one thing but this is a 'permanant solution'.

 

If I were doing this at work Id definately use NFS .. at home I dunno, I don't really use samba because I have no windows PC's but if I did i might just add an extra share.

 

Its just my 2c but I think this is one of those cases where it might be doing it the technically best if slightly more complex way.

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This is an issue that I have personal experience with. One of my housemates has a flat panel iMac, running 10.3.2, that he uses for software developement and digital video editing. I have a mandrake 9.2 box serving smb shares that he stores his gigabytes of video on. The key word here is "stores", because you really can't edit video over a network, it has to be local. So, whether you're using smb or nfs, your still only using it to copy the files to your local hard drive to edit, and then copying back to the server for storage. Also, for a the linux newbie there are numerous GUI options in Mandy for configuring samba, but I found few for nfs (I stayed up for a while last night trying to setup some exports on one of the linux boxes, but wasn't able to get OSX to see anything. I'll still try more, because it does sound interesting :) ). I'm not saying that there might not be some bumps initially getting it set up, But there is a great deal more support on the Mac for using samba for cross-platform file transfer than anything else. And, if you're wanting to also share this data with WinBlows clients, then smb is really the way to go.

Edited by retcynm
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editing video over network....

Were talking a G5 here, thats gigabit by default :D , presuming its a half decent linux box doing fileserving then it should be gigabit ??? You should get about 600Mb/sec which is 80-odd MB/sec which is about the same as an AV disk!!!

 

However I agree through samba there will be too much latency.

 

And Mac guys, don't put yourself down, OS-X is a FULL UNIX OS :D

Its also REALLY PRETTY.... Id LOVE ONE!!!!

 

I had a REALLY long talk to the apple guy responsible for clusters today, I mean real long cos he was pumping me for info ... since we own a lot of supercomputers....

(thats what happens when you flash your name badge to get into an expo quickly unfortunately - but I had to do it in a long lunch...)

The organisers werent keen but fortunately the sponsors had a rep there (IBM) who we just bought several supercomputers from :D

 

So - I played the jump the amazingly long queue trick ... :woops:

(think though its good people would queue for hours to get into a linux expo)

 

Anyway we had a looongg chat on server architecture and the image problem Apple face as a server company or calc server company (and they have the worlds fastest chip !!!! until IBM make it for themselves)

 

Anyway, I asked him about the image and we actually talked about this!!!! He said it was a bit uphill but generally they thought that those who were connecting UNIX to UNIX would do it from a CLI anyway!!!

 

Its REALLY EASY....

Firstly can you ping from the mac to the mandy box???

If your in the same network it should ping fine, if ping doesn't work by IP then your network isn't set up right!! Get back and we'll help ya....

 

If you can ping then you need a file /etc/exports

This must contain the hosts as resolvable names, unless you can ping by name then you can't use names. You can either fix the dns resolution (post back) or use the IP address...

 

Heres a really simple one

# dir to share network /netmask (options 0 rw)

/home/me 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw)

 

 

when thats written

exportfs -ra

(this rereads the exports and reexports)

on the client

mount 192.168.2.1:/home/me /mnt/video

presuming the server is xxx.1 and you already have a mount point /video

The ownership and permissions are recursive ... if you dont have access as a user then your mount won't either.

check it as root-----

if it works (i.e. cd /mnt/video ;ls and you see /home/me but it doesn't work as a normal user then its the permissions that are wrong... I always forget ... DOH

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Thank you everyone for your prompt input. A few notes:

 

I currently do NOT have a GB Lan set up... while you are correct in that the Mac G5 has a GB NIC, I have been waiting on upgrading the network to GB until I am sure that this method will work effectively... Otherwise I am going to spend that money on firewire drives or enclosures or... something. I am really hoping this works!

 

Second, I don't care at ALL if the PC's see anything on the network... they are only used for email and word processing, and sparingly at that. I mentioned that they can be seen because I thought it was rather odd that the unix/linux boxes couldn't talk to each other but could see the windows boxes.

 

Third, I am almost positive that there is no setting in Mas OS 10.3.2 (or 10.2.x for that matter) that allows you to specify a Windows workgroup. In my Mac to PC networking experience, samba has been fairly easy to get working (with the exception of the mounting bug... but I think it's mostly fixed in 10.3.x). Regardless, when I access the network from the G5 I can see a group called "MDKGROUP" but I cannot actually access it (this is via samba btw. The same holds true for my iBook running 10.2.8... it can see the MDKGROUP but no access).

 

I agree with gowator; I would rather use NFS... it just seems the right thing to do?

 

My first goal is going to be to use the tips provided here to get it to work... I'll let you know the update.

 

Thanks again for the help!

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