Date: Fri, 25 May 2012 17:40:07 +0100 From: Arthur Chance <freebsd@qeng-ho.org> To: Frank Bonnet <f.bonnet@esiee.fr> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "Cloud" software ? Message-ID: <4FBFB5E7.1050005@qeng-ho.org> In-Reply-To: <4FBFA17A.7010906@esiee.fr> References: <4FBF3EA9.2000103@esiee.fr> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1205251514330.22501@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <4FBF8F38.9070300@qeng-ho.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1205251602350.22852@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <4FBF9356.7040504@esiee.fr> <4FBF9BDF.4020208@qeng-ho.org> <4FBFA17A.7010906@esiee.fr>
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On 05/25/12 16:12, Frank Bonnet wrote: [big snip] > Well ... in short I need to let our users ( students + profs ) access > and share their data ( living in their UNIX home directories ) > The access must be easy and possible from as much devices as possible. > Am I clear enough ? ( sorry English is not my native language ...) That's fine. OK, so you're after basic file system visibility everywhere. You should look at Mehmet Erol Sanliturk's reply as well, he gives useful links. As he said in his post, NFS is the first place to start. It's available on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS, other Unix derived systems, and Windows 7. The one thing to be careful of is that it works best when you have all home directories on central servers and all access is on client machines. It is possible to cross mount NFS that machines act as both servers and clients but it has many problems and one server crashing can cause everything to lock up. (Been there, done that, cursed repeatedly.) For earlier (< 7) Windows boxes, one possibility is running Samba on the Unix servers. This would seem most natural to a Windows user as they merely have to browse the network to find the shared file systems. However, another possibility is running a WebDAV server that makes the home directories visible. Windows (>= XP) can connect drive letters to WebDAV servers, and there are also Android and iPhone apps that can access WebDAV. This would let smartphone and tablet users get to the shared data, if that's useful. Please note that I use Android but not iOS, so any IOS suggestions are from a quick Google search, not experience. It also seems that you have to pay for the relevant iOS apps. Maybe an iPhone/iPad user can improve on this? I hope this is of some help. Possibly useful links: The handbook chapter on network servers. This covers NFS, Samba and Apache which can be used for WebDAV. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/book.html#NETWORK-SERVERS Wikipedia on WebDAV. This links onwards to all sorts of related resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV An Android app that can access WebDAV (and much more besides). This is one I use, but please note that I haven't used it specifically for WebDAV. You may be able to find others but this is well rated. It's got free and paid for versions. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=xcxin.filexpert A (paid for) iPhone WebDAV app. Apparently iWork for iOS can also handle WebDAV, but I know nothing about it or its suitability. http://greenbytes.de/dav-e.html
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