Home network, file sharing how? - SOLVED

[microbrain]

I have a small home network of 3 desktops and 2 wireless laptops. I never managed to get windows to fileshare without all sorts of problems.  I'd like to set up file sharing on Linux  is there a step by step guide ?  I have tried a couple of on-line guides but they all end in failure.  I guess the first step is to load a whole bunch of things through the package manager  - so as step one,  what do I need to select in PM as a first step?

Thanx,  MB.

[ElCuervo]

Step one: open the PCLinuxOS Control Center
Step two: click on "network sharing"
Step three: walk through "share drive using NFS" - if you're asked to download and install software, do so. make sure the server starts
Step four: go to another computer on your network, do steps one and two, but instead of step three, click on "Access NFS shared drives and directories". You should see the server you set up on the first PC, but if you don't, click "search servers".
Step five: when you see the server, walk through the setup using the defaults. At the very end, click the "Mount" button on the bottom. When you click "Done", a dialog will ask if you want to write to fstab - say yes, and then you'll always be able to find the share under /mnt/yourshare. I drag it from the directory to my /Desktop and choose "link here" for easy availability.

You may have to logout/login, and sometimes a reboot works better for me.

[microbrain]

HI,
THanks for the reply,  OK so I got to step 3  "walk through "share drive using NFS"  I think I must have already downloaded the SW in a previous attempt  - I get a screen titled "DrakNFS manage NFS shares" and a large empty text box,  there is no 'walkthrough as such"  - jsut three buttons "ADD MODIFY REMOVE".....

I thought I'd try and point to a folder on my desktop (utilities) but then on the second machine  "search servers" revealed another empty text box..  Any further help? 

[muungwana]

is your network made up of linux machines only or a mix of linux and windows machines? i dont think NFS works out of the box with windows.

what versions of windows do have if you have any

[microbrain]

Step one: open the PCLinuxOS Control Center
Step two: click on "network sharing"
Step three: walk through "share drive using NFS" - if you're asked to download and install software, do so. make sure the server starts
Step four: go to another computer on your network, do steps one and two, but instead of step three, click on "Access NFS shared drives and directories". You should see the server you set up on the first PC, but if you don't, click "search servers".
Step five: when you see the server, walk through the setup using the defaults. At the very end, click the "Mount" button on the bottom. When you click "Done", a dialog will ask if you want to write to fstab - say yes, and then you'll always be able to find the share under /mnt/yourshare. I drag it from the directory to my /Desktop and choose "link here" for easy availability.

You may have to logout/login, and sometimes a reboot works better for me.

Got there in the end Many many sincere thanks to those who replied!

I'm trying to totally throw MS away,  Keeping MS only on 1 dual boot machine  - the only remaining question now  is does anybody have a canoscan 440f Linux driver  (Spent an hour looking on the net) - Thought not!

Cheers again

[microbrain]

Spoke to soon ....

I should have tried to write to it...  all I get is Permission denied   ACCESS denied -  I tried all the permission screens I could find but  nothing seems to work.

Is this software the same as windows uses?

[microbrain]

Ok after much time and many attempts  I find I can access and change files IF  I logged on as root on to any machine on my net.  I also find the spare drive I put into the system has to be manually mounted everytime I switch on and is not accessible from any other machine having set it up with NFS  (which I think now means Not F$£*ing Sharing)

What I was hoping to do was simply have a spare drive that any member of my family could back up their laptop/pc to  and from which they could share a read only folder of pictures, mp3 etc - something I also found impossible on Windows - if you set it up it would work one day but not the next or suddenly a pc would lose it's interent settings.  In terms of networking Linux is clearly not an improvement other than it's free.  If there is anybody out there who has managed to get something like this working, and can help a newbie I'd be grateful 

[muungwana]

permissions in linux is a very critical concept to understand and it will drive you insane if you miss it. Your inability to write to your share is a permission issue and is independent of your network set up. your mounting issue is also independent of your network set up ..you are lumping up different concepts into a networking problem and things may appear to be more difficult that they are

What permissions do the folder you want to share over the network have? make them read/write/executable to owner,user and other

[microbrain]

THanks for the pointer - OK I'll break it down nto smaller chunks, permission first...

Just in case I am going about it in the wrong way, how would you set permissions for a folder?  If I right click on the folder I am trying to share then click properties and then the permissions tag I have set  Owner Group & others  to "Can view and modify Content"  - yet I see no mention of 'execute'  hence the question at the start of this post -

[muungwana]

there is no GUI way to set execution bit to a folder. The bit is usually set by default and nobody changes it, the bit is set if you can enter a folder and see its content. You dont have to worry about this

now try again to write to the folder you have set to be shared over the network from another computer ..still getting permission denied errors? this kind of error only shows up when permissions arent set correctly

[microbrain]

Got it - I also found it is necessary to reboot after making minor changes - more so on the client machine,   I also had a dodgy network cable  and for some reason  if more than 4 machines are powered up on the network only the first four seem to talk to each other. I think that might be the router where I seem to remember only setting a narrow IP address range  in it or the firewall - anyway that's not a problem.  In terms of the network it now does roughly what I want  if I bear in mind a few simple rules.   - Again many thanks  for your input,  especially explaining it was a multi-problem - cheers!   - more questions later.