Running Linux, 5th Edition

Chapter 15. File Sharing

In this chapter we give you a quick guide to the two major ways in the Linux world to share resources between systems. First we cover Samba, which uses Microsoft Windows networking protocols to allow users on one system to read and write files on another system, and to send jobs to printers on remote systems. The advantage of using Samba is that Linux and Unix can be integrated almost seamlessly with Microsoft systems, both clients and servers. The Microsoft Windows networking protocols can be used for sharing of files between Linux systems, although the preferred protocol for that really is the NFS protocol.

We present both NFS and NIS, protocols developed by Sun Microsystems and used by Unix systems for decades. NFS, the Network File System, allows systems to share files between Linux and Unix systems in a manner similar to Samba. NIS, the Network Information System, allows user information to be stored in one place and accessed by multiple systems so you don't have to update all the systems when a user or password changes. Although NIS is not a tool for file and printer sharing, we present it in this chapter because it shares some components with its cousin NFS, and because it can make NFS easier to administer because NIS allows each user to have the same account number on all systems.

NFS and NIS are useful at sites where only Linux and variants of Unix are connected. Versions have been created for Microsoft systems, but they are not particularly robust ...