Fedora™ 7 and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® Bible

Chapter 18. Setting Up a File Server

In This Chapter

• Setting up an NFS file server in Linux

• Setting up a Samba file server in Linux

When groups of people need to work together on projects, they usually need to share documents. Likewise, it can be efficient for groups of people on a computer network to share common applications and directories of information needed to do their jobs. A common way to store files centrally and share them on a network is by setting up a file server.

Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems include support for each of the most common file server protocols in use today. The Network File System (NFS) has always been the file-sharing protocol of choice for Linux and other UNIX systems. Networks with many Windows and OS/2 computers tend to use Samba, or SMB (Server Message Block) protocol. This chapter describes how to set up file servers and clients associated with NFS and Samba, and file servers set up in Linux.

Note

Two other types of file servers are also described in this book: FTP (using vsFTPd) and AppleTalk (using netatalk). To set up public FTP file servers, refer to Chapter 20. Chapter 26 describes how to set up a netatalk server for file sharing with Apple computers.

Goals of Setting Up a File Server

By centralizing data and applications on a file server, you can accomplish several goals:

• Centralized distribution - You can add documents or applications to one location and make them accessible to any authorized computer or user. In this way, you don't ...