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

Suppression of revolution

[PeteyG]

How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other?

Hah, they don't. I don't need the devious little things plotting behind my back. If they can't talk... they can't revolt.

Unless, of course, my brutal oppression is what pushes them to bloody revolution...

Uh..

[DrunkBastard]

well, you could always use that little protocol called "file transfer protocol". Go figure. A protocol used to copy files. Works on every platform know to man kind. If you wanted to pull out a good ol' system that fell into disuse, get gopher working! As a side, there are scp protocols for pretty much everything as well.

Re:Uh..

[toast0]

If you need secure transfers, use SFTP protocol. It's trivial.

Actually TFTP is trivial, I believe.

(yes, this is a dumb joke)

You've already given in

[Jahf]

Face it, you're trying to network 2 MS OSes with 3 non-MS OSes. You want to fileshare between them without "giving in" but you're keeping the non-MS OSes.

Samba is nothing to be ashamed of. I know plenty of folks who use it with no MS OSes in the mix at all.

You seem to know it is probably going to be the simplest solution ... yet you exclude it off-hand? Sounds like an exercise in frustration to me.

Re:You've already given in

[Josh Booth]

I have opened my Computerus Geekus Bibleus, or Computer Geek Bible for those who don't speak fluent Latin, and it says here, in the Book of "Networking", Chapter 0x03, Verse 0x00, "Thou shalt not use the protocol known as SMB/CIFS on any sort of network, being of Ethernet, Token Ring, Appletalk, or others of this sort, when thou wishest to export thine directory trees, exceptest as thou dost use the Good Software Package that He calls Samba. This Package may only be installed upon thine computers which run some Unix variant, whether they be *BSD, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, or another." So, as you can see for yourself, you don't need to worry about giving in to the Empire! The good book tells you that it is completely alright.

Ah, a Debian user?

[Tor]

Since you ask right now, you are probably using the 'unstable' branch of Debian (where Netatalk recently broke for Mac OS X clients).

That's when I decided to dig into the world of NetInfo - the NIS-like information system for Mac OS X. Basically, I now configured my Mac OS X client as a NIS client, which also auto-mount file shares from my Linux server via NFS. It's not that hard to set up, really. A nice side effect is that the network drives perform significantly better than they did using AFP/Netatalk.

Of course, I also run Samba on my server. If you are looking for a single solution/protocol across platforms, then that's probably the route to go. Mac OS X comes with Samba.

Then, if you are looking for file synchronization tools (as opposed to network file sharing), let me recommend a little utility called "unison". Runs on Linux, Mac OS X (UNIX), and Windows.

X2VNC

[bite.me]

Creates a 1 pixel buffer at the edge of your screen. When you drag your mouse over it, it appears that the curser goes to other monitor, and the control of the keyboard too. Very handy. So with a combination of that, cygwin, samba, and netatalk, I can stay on top of all my files.

Also, OS-X speaks samba, so there's less and less need for the appletalk protocol.

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...