# advice setting up a network



## k2msmith (Apr 24, 2009)

I'm a little new to freebsd networking and I'm reaching out for some suggestions.

I recently set up a freebsd 7.1 "workstation" on my home office network which is connected directly to the ethernet port of an Apple Airport Extreme router (which is connected to my ISP).  Also on my network is a number of MAC machines running Leopard.

As a first step, I'd like to share files between the freebsd box and the MAC's on the LAN.  My first inclination is to use NFS - but I am not sure how this is supported on the MAC side. (maybe the underlying network files system implmentation on leopard IS NFS ?)

As a second step, I'd like the freebsd box to be accessible from a public network, so I can copy files to/from it from a remote access point.  I may want to do this through a web service, because it would be nice to have a private website available on this machine that I could access from anywhere (through a UMPC) to read/transfer data.

Any suggestions/recommendations on a starting point ?


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## tingo (Apr 24, 2009)

file sharing on your network - use Samba.


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## vivek (Apr 24, 2009)

Install Samba on FreeBSD so that it will act as file server for Mac / Windows / UNIX system.

Install NFS on FreeBSD if you just need to share files between UNIX / Linux boxes. Mac should also work with this option.

FreeBSD comes with OpenSSH which can be used to share files easily via scp or sftp securely. You can also install Apache and configure apache webdav modules.


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## phoenix (Apr 25, 2009)

There's nothing to "install" for NFS.  FreeBSD ships with full NFSv3 client and server support.  See the comments in /etc/default/rc.conf, and the various man pages for mountd, lockd, nfsd, etc.


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## k2msmith (Apr 25, 2009)

vivek said:
			
		

> Install Samba on FreeBSD so that it will act as file server for Mac / Windows / UNIX system.
> 
> Install NFS on FreeBSD if you just need to share files between UNIX / Linux boxes. Mac should also work with this option.
> 
> FreeBSD comes with OpenSSH which can be used to share files easily via scp or sftp securely. You can also install Apache and configure apache webdav modules.


Is SAMBA the way to go here ?  A quick check on samba.org and it shows it supports windows only.  I don't have any windows machines only MAC which is darwin-based (unix-like).  Maybe just set up NFS is where I should start looking  ?


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## Levenson (Apr 25, 2009)

For Installing samba on FreeBSD go to  /usr/ports/net/samba32 
and run under the root:
make install clean


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## phoenix (Apr 27, 2009)

k2msmith said:
			
		

> Is SAMBA the way to go here ?  A quick check on samba.org and it shows it supports windows only.  I don't have any windows machines only MAC which is darwin-based (unix-like).  Maybe just set up NFS is where I should start looking  ?



If you will only be using FreeBSD and MacOS X, you can use the built-in NFS tools.

However, the security of NFS isn't that great (you have to keep your UIDs and GIDs the same across all systems, and/or use a central database like NIS), and should only be used on local networks.

While the server-side of things is not native to either system, both FreeBSD and MacOS X include the ability to mount remote SMB/CIFS filesystems.  You can also install Samba on both to share filesystems to other systems.  SMB/CIFS also supports much nicer ACLs and filesystem security (beyond the simple user/group/owner).

NFSv4 supports a nicer ACL security system, although FreeBSD doesn't have an NFSv4 server as yet.  No idea about MacOS X.


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