I recently replaced an ancient laptop with a slightly less ancient one.
- host for backups for three other machines
- serve files I don’t necessarily need on the new machine
- relatively lightweight - “server” is ~15 years old
- relatively simple - I’d rather not manage a dozen docker containers.
- internal-facing
- does NOT need to handle Android and friends. I can use sync-thing for that if I need to.
Left to my own devices I’d probably rsync for 90% of that, but I’d like to try something a little more pointy-clicky or at least transparent in my dotage.
Edit: Not SAMBA (I freaking hate trying to make that work)
Edit2: for the young’uns: NFS (linux “network filesystem”)
Edit 3: LAN only. I may set up a VPN connection one day but it’s not currently a priority. (edited post to reflect questions)
Last Edit: thanks, friends, for this discussion! I think based on this I’ll at least start with NFS + my existing backups system (Mint’s thing, which is I think just a gui in front of rcync). May play w/ modern SAMBA if I have extra time.
Ill continue to read the replies though - some interesting ideas.
Yeah, Samba has come a long way. I run a Linux based server but all clients are Windows or Android so it just makes sense to run SMB shares instead of NFS.
you and perhaps @curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com, may I ask if you use samba with portable devices, like laptops?
I do and my experience is that programs that try to access it when I don’t have network access tend to freeze, including my desktop environment, but any file managers too if I click the wrong place by accident. but it occurs enough without user action too.
oh and it breaks all machines at once if the server or network is down. which is rare but very annoying.
did you experience this too? do you have some advice? is SMB just unsuitable for this?
honestly I would prefer if the cifs driver would keep track of last successful communication, and if it was long ago instantly fail all accesses. without unmounting so that open directories and file handles keep being valid.
and if all software on this world wouldn’t behave as if they were doing IO on the main thread. honestly this went smoother with windows clients but I’m not going back.
Only windows devices (laptop I use for work stuff). The other laptops are Linux (NFS) or Chromebooks (for the kids, no access).
Devices don’t really leave often (aside from mine), so not much of an issue. If the NAS is offline, not much else would be going on either.
Honestly no, that’s not really my use case. My PC is running over a 2.5G cable. Funny enough, my wife and kid’s laptops rarely leave the house. I have experienced some wait time if the server is down while the PC looks for it, but nothing so drastic as locking things up. That particular window will just be spinning for a bit trying to find the server over the network.
Same. I’ve used SMB for years. Don’t have any problems with it across all my Windows and Android devices. Pretty sure I had an iPad in there at one point as well.
I’ve always had weird issues with SMB like ghost files, issues with case sensitivity (zfs pool), it dropping out and me having to reboot to re-establish the connection… Since switching to Linux and using NFS, it’s been almost indistinguishable from a native drive for my casual use (including using a ssd pool as a steam library…)
I can definitely say in the past I had similar experiences. I haven’t really had any problems with SMB in the last 5 years that I can recall. It really was a shit show back in the day, but it’s been rock solid for me anyway.