How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other?

VonGuard asks: "I'd imagine this is a common scenario out there for Slashdot readers: I have multiple desktops, all sitting right next to each other and all running different OS's. Linux, Mac OS X and 9, Windows 98, and XP. The problem is, despite these machines being only inches arpart physically, in the digital world, they are miles apart. I have no single way to get them all to talk to each other. NFS is impossibly complex, Appletalk is unreliable thanks to netatalk, while PCMacLan, and Samba make me feel like I'm giving into the Empire. Isn't there a simpler way to get files from one of these machines to the other? Right now, I use webservers and write little HTML files that link to the files on each machine. Isn't there a better way to do this?" Is there really a network sharing standard that works across a number of operating systems aside from Samba? Truth be told, Samba "works-for-me", so that's what I us. However, when it comes to simple file copying, sometimes a simple scp is all I need. What protocols do you use in networks that consist of 3 or more operating systems?

Comments

WebDAV

[austad]

Set up WebDAV. It should be supported on all of the OS's you mention. This is what I use between OSX, Linux, and Winders.

limitations

[AllMightyPaul]

You're seriously limiting yourself by not wanting to use those solutions. At work we have PCs, Unix boxes and Macs (running OS 8 and 9). They all have a common directory that they need to access (called 'atalk' for historical reasons). We have three daemons running such that they can all access it.

PCs: Samba
Mac: netatalk
Misc: ftp

So if all else fails, they can use FTP.

But seriously, by discounting Samba based on the fact that it "makes [you] feel like [you're] giving into the Empire" is a really stupid reason. If it works, it works and you should use it. I mean, if you really didn't want to feel like you were giving into the "Empire" you wouldn't have a Microsoft box on your desktop at all, would you? So instead of being a hypocrite, just use the solution that works. And remember that Samba is open source, if that makes you feel any better.

But I suppose you could always use FTP or http://ubiqx.org/cifs/ (but even CIFS uses SMB).

Hell, that's nothing...

[cr0sh]

At least in the example given, you are using all fairly modern machines. The real hacker challenge comes when you want to interface something a little more esoteric - like that nifty C=64, TRS-80 Color Computer, or $DEITY forbid - a shiny IMSAI 8080 you just picked up off of eBay...

Yeah, that's where the challenge lies. However, even today, kids have it easy: Provided the thing has a serial port and you can code to it, there are small serial-to-ethernet "converters" available (most of them consist of some form of microcontroller acting as a "go-between" from the ethernet interface and the serial port).

I remember one time in the early 1990's when I picked up a Compaq SLT/386 with 6 meg of RAM, running Caldera's OpenDOS (IIRC). No PCMCIA slots - only a serial port and a parallel port. Since network equipment was still fairly expensive (especially those lovely pocket parallel ethernet adaptors), I looked for a solution.

I ended up creating a funky bit-banging parallel port solution using 4 conductor phone line, dual jack adaptors, and custom wired parallel to RJ-11 plugs. I intended to write software to allow all computers on this network to transmit/receive on it - checking for the status of the lines to avoid colisions, random wait times when there was a busy, etc - I was looking to get 9600 baud on this thing. I managed to build enough dongles for three machines, but I never got around to the coding portion. Always wondered how well (if at all) it would have worked...