# Complete newbie with file sharing [solved]

## Dominique_71

It is the first time I have 2 computers on my local home network and I want to share files between them.

One computer is a laptop, the other a desktop.

On the laptop, I want to share $HOME with the desktop.

On the desktop, I want to share $HOME and a few /mnt/* partitions with the laptop.

What I try is to install gigolo, but when I run it, I go nowhere. It is no share on the left panel, and when I click on Action -> Connect, I just don't understand what to do. When I click on Help -> Protocols, it find only "Périphérique Unix (file)"

Also, the fuse module is loaded at boot time. It is no fuse group in gentoo, my user is in the disk group. And I don't use gnome or kde, but fvwm-crystal and thunar or mc (mostly mc...).

I also think I have missed some obvious step(s), but as I know almost nothing to file sharing, I am completely lost.Last edited by Dominique_71 on Sun Jun 10, 2012 12:45 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## cwr

I use Samba, but I think most people use NFS.  Samba is large, but straightforward

to build, and until recently pretty reliable.  It's taken to not updating directories

correctly, though, so it might be better to try NFS.

To copy stuff between two machines I'd start with Unison.

Will

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## Dominique_71

Thank you Will. I am adding NFS support for both client and server into my kernel.

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## Dominique_71

 *cwr wrote:*   

> 
> 
> To copy stuff between two machines I'd start with Unison.
> 
> 

 

If I understand right, unison will let me to automatically synchronize 2 directories. It can be fine for things like my emails, but for other things like my music collection, I want to be able to copy individual files or directories. For that, I think than using a file manager like mc or thunar will be the best solution.

EDIT: I installed sshfs-fuse and openssh. That way, it is as easy than to add sshd in the default runlevel and use sshfs as user to mount the remote file systems.

EDIT 2: I updated Mounting SFTP shares a little.

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## i92guboj

There are many ways to accomplish this, depending on your needs and preferences.

You can use samba, yes, but I'd rather use cifs, which is the modern version of the smb protocol. On a quick view, this seems to be more or less up to date.

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Samba

If there will be windows machines in your network, or you are going to use smart phones that support only samba or cifs, then this is the right option for you. If that's not a concern, you can also use NFS. I find its setup to be a bit simpler, but it has its own assortment of problems, and it takes more work to make it work reliably with Windows machines (at least, the last time I tried, admittedly, years ago).

With samba you have an advantage, though. There are apps that support it natively, so, you don't strictly need to mount a samba share. You can just use dolphin, mc, or some other file manager that can do samba for itself.

Another option is to emerge ssh, start sshd, and connect to your linux box from windows using filezilla, putty, winscp and all the like. Of course, you can also connect from linux boxes, and there are also apps for android that can be used. This is the most secure way, but it doesn't integrate that transparently in the Windows side.

Another option you might want to consider, if you like having these files available no matter where you go, is the (in)famous cloud. Just open an account in dropbox, upload your files in there, and then install dropbox in all the computers where you want to use your files. The dropbox will appear as a local folder in both linux and windows, you just copy and move files into there as you would do with any other local file, the dropbox daemon silently syncs the folders when needed, and you have to do nothing. It's configurable to a degree though, you can choose what to sync and what not to sync. The main limitation of the dropbox is the limited storage capacity they offer (5gb I think, not sure), unless you are willing to pay.

There's also google drive, which is mostly the same thing.

Another option is to put together a lamp server and install something like owncloud on it. In that case, your storage will be available from anywhere (well, you can of course limit it only to local computers, of course) and the only limit will be the storage space that you have in your web server. If you have your own external web server you can also use that. 

This last option might be viable or not depending on how your bandwidth perform. Most lines are not symmetric, which means that they are usually good enough to download big files without much problems, but they perform like 1/10th worse when uploading files, which would greatly limit the size of what you can upload to your server in a reasonable amount of time.

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## Dominique_71

Thank you for the explanation.

For now, I am happy with sshd and sshfs. sshfs mount remote file systems locally, and I can work with them as usual. This is very amazing, and simple to setup.

And yes, it can be funny to have a few things on dropbox or google when I am travelling.

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