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.
NFS is the best option if you only need to access the shared drives over your LAN. If you want to mount them over the internet, there’s SSHFS.
See, this is interesting. I’m out here looking for the new shiny easy button, but what I’m hearing is “the old config-file based thing works really well. ain’t broken, etc.”
I may give that a swing and see.
I’m at the same age - just to mention, samba is nowhere near the horror show it used to be. That said, I use NFS for my Debian boxes and mac mini build box to hit my NAS, samba for the windows laptop.
What about NFS over the internet?
You can use NFS over the internet, but it will be a lot more work to secure it. It was intended for use over a LAN and performance may not be great over the internet, especially with high latency or packet loss.