[KLUG Members] Re: Nautilus in RH 7.3 and Samba shares...revisited... -- Use NFS for UNIX-to-UNIX

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>>I just have what might be an easy question (actually I have 1 1/2
>>questions...)
>>I was finally able to establish samba shares throughout my
>>Windows/Linux network.  However, when I sign in as root on the RH 7.3
>>machine, (I'm using the Gnome desktop as root user, BTW), I use
>>Nautilus
>>to browse my samba shares.  I can access all folders with no problem,
>>but when I go to open a Word document or an .mp3 file, I get a message
>>saying that the application, be it mpg123 or AbiWord "cannot open the
>>file in samba shares".  At first I thought this was something I did
>>again, but, decided to use Konqueror on the KDE menu, and I can open
>>any files within my samba shares with no problems.  Is it just something
>>in Nautilus?  A config setting of some sort?
>AFAIK, Gnome applications do not support directly accessing files over the
>Microsoft SMB (aka "Windows Networking") protocol.

A well-behaved GNOME app supports whatever the installed GNOME VFS modules
support, be it http, ftp, smb, webdav, etc...  It isn't quite perfect yet.

>FYI ... do _not_ use SMB for UNIX-to-UNIX ...
>You should _not_ be accessing files from UNIX/Linux client to UNIX/Linux
>servers via the SMB protocol (e.g., Samba service on the UNIX/Linux server and
>Konqueror on the UNIX/Linux client).
>You _should_ be using the Network FileSystem (NFS).  NFS is _native_ to
>UNIX, meaning users can run regular UNIX commands on remote files.  Both the 
>NFS server and client are built right into the Linux kernel.

I agree 99%, but NFS is just a pain for adhoc connections,  one needs to
establish a mount/connection for everything one wants to use.  Which is just
irritating.  I'm curious if there is anything akin to SMB for browseing/ad-hoc
file management for UNIX, other than SMB.

>Basic NFS is _very_easy_ to configure -- both on the client and server,
>because

True.