Network sharing between Mac OSX and Ubuntu

[rklepper]

I have a Mac running OSX 10.5.6 and a laptop running Ubuntu 8.10. I would like to turn on file sharing between them, but there seems to be a program missing in Ubuntu to do this. It asks for Samba Windows file sharing application. Can that be so? Seems odd to use a Windows program to communicate between Mac and Linux.

Any ideas the best way to share files on the network between these 2 computers.

Thanks

[ocabj]

File sharing is easier to discuss in terms of a client / server model. Are you going to be using the OS X computer as a workstation and want to store files on the Ubuntu computer?

If so, you have several options. The most common two:

1. ftp
2. samba

FTP is unencrypted. You run an ftp daemon (such as proftpd) on the server. The connect to the ftp server using an ftp client on your workstation. You can transfer files back and forth through the client.

Samba emulates the smb protocol, which allows for file sharing via network shared volumes. Samba is sometimes called a Windows share simply because smb is primarily a Windows based protocol. But since Samba allows *nix computers to create smb shares and allow computers to connect to other smb shares, Samba isn't restricted to Windows only. You can install and run Samba on Ubuntu (it's already installed on OS X) and create users with passwords, and map specific directories on the samba server to share to said users. You can connect to smb/samba shares from OS X using the Finder -> Go -> connect to server mechanism (or smbmount in terminal). Mounting (connecting to a) samba shared volume will appear on your workstation like a hard drive, except it's a network mounted volume, and you can manipulate files on that network mounted volume as if it were a drive on your computer.

Another option is sshfs, which is an easy, secure way to get access files on the Ubuntu box from the OS X machine. Any Unix or Linux OS by default should come with SSHD installed and enabled, or easily configurable to run on boot. Just create an account on the Ubuntu box. Download MacFuse (and the SSHFS GUI if desired) for the OS X machine and you can connect to any computer running ssh using the valid account and mount any directory on that target server that the account has rights to. It will appear on the OS X machine like a network shared volume (just like with Samba). The throughput on SSHFS is a bit slow though, from what I've seen with OS X and MacFuse. Not sure if it's a Fuse issue.

[johncolby]

Samba will be the easiest way to set this up:

Your mac can access the SMB shares from the Linux laptop just fine, and visa versa. On your mac, simply select "share files and folders using SMB" under "Options..." in the "File Sharing" section of the "Sharing" preference pane.

If having to use a windows service on a mac/linux only network annoys you, then you can google around for "netatalk", which is the open source version of Apple's AFP protocol that you can install on your Linux machine. Also, you might look into installing "avahi", which is the open source version of Apple's Bonjour (although Leopard handles SMB shares easily w/o it).

sshfs is great, but isn't really needed here since both computers will be on the same local network.