# OpenAFS vs. NFS vs. Samba...

## tsuru

Basically I am wanting to get some file sharing going between 2 + linux systems on a home network and I am wondering which of these services would be the best to set up...

I have never had any experience with OpenAFS but their website gives some nice reviews.  I have worked with NFS/NIS in and IRIX environment and I liked how that worked for the most part but the last time I looked it seemed like NFS had some security weaknesses...but maybe those were just the regular security weaknesses that come with running another daemon on the system  :Neutral: .  Of course i think we're all familiar with samba...

Does anyone know of any performance issues where one or two might outshine the other(s)?  Any outstanding security vulnerabilities?  Is there another network FS daemon I'm overlooking?

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## arkane

I've used both samba and nfs before between linux boxes... I have to say I really liked nfs.  Just in my study of samba, it appears that there is some "natural" bottleneck to it.. probably something to do with the CIFS protocol and not samba specific.  Of course, I was putting over a gig of information  :Smile:   As far as security goes, you really don't need to worry about security when your running a home network.  Not unless your kid or wife is a 31337 h/-\x0r.  (you run a firewall between yourself and the world, right?)

Can't comment on AFS or Coda, or any of the others.

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## gboyce

 *arkane wrote:*   

> I've used both samba and nfs before between linux boxes... I have to say I really liked nfs.  Just in my study of samba, it appears that there is some "natural" bottleneck to it.. probably something to do with the CIFS protocol and not samba specific.  Of course, I was putting over a gig of information   As far as security goes, you really don't need to worry about security when your running a home network.  Not unless your kid or wife is a 31337 h/-\x0r.  (you run a firewall between yourself and the world, right?)
> 
> Can't comment on AFS or Coda, or any of the others.

 

Do you use wireless?  If you do, then you're opening yourself up, and your firewall is moot.  Security is always something to keep in mind.

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## svan9420

I run a firewall at home as well very tight security.  I do not even trust my other computers.  You never know when one machine might be hacked which could make your other machines vunerable.  

Remember, no computer is hacker proof, you can just make it more difficult to hack is all.

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## gboyce

 *svan9420 wrote:*   

> Remember, no computer is hacker proof, you can just make it more difficult to hack is all.

 

Not quite.

Safe machines can be found with no services running, with no network connection, powered off in the closet

 :Wink: 

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## mfairchi

From my experience it sems that NFS is by far the easiest to setup, but inherently insecure.  AFS sounds like the best from what i've read, only it doesn't sound esy to set up.  But i am gonna give it a go.  Illl let ya know how it goes.

-michael

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## Utoxin

In my experience, Samba is by far the easiest to set up. I had a horrible time trying to get NFS to work. Finally gave up, and went back to samba.

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## toxborrow

Well I use NFS to mount my mp3's and ogg's but mostly I use it to share my /usr/portage/ between my 4 pcs (very important when you have a 56k and you dont feel like downloading sources and rsyncing 4 times). I've only used it in a home network sense but was plenty easy to setup, granted I had my troubles with not realising portmap wasnt loaded by default. But overall its working very well now.

I've tried SAMBA for a very short time last year but very little more than transfering a few files back and forth between a win98 machine, and even then I was only using smbclient.

I've not tried OpenAFS, but I would love to hear you opinion after you try it michael.

Sadly I'm using wireless, can't imagine I get many h4x0rs driving through the village where the average age is 60. Most file transfers that arnt on NFS I use `scp` for (great app!) but my IRC and HTTP sessions are still open to the world, not sure what to do with them other than trying to setup some sorta secure proxing via my firewall.[/url]

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