# Samba and FTP



## BostonBSD (Jan 17, 2021)

I have a fair degree of experience wrangling with file sharing.

All I had to say is setting up an FTP server was way easier than Samba and it was included with base.

anonymous [in the file browser]:
ftp://ftp@hostname/

This document, I suspect may be outdated, though it had slightly more info I found useful [info about inetd]




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						File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
					





					docs.freebsd.org


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## ralphbsz (Jan 17, 2021)

Setting up a Samba server is considered among the more difficult sys admin tasks. I've done it twice in the last 25 years or so, and both times it took many hours and didn't get anywhere near perfect. People (*) tell me that it is really easy, and always works, and doesn't cause any trouble. I think those people are either geniuses or insane.

Setting up NFS is comperatively easy. One of the problems is that setting up NFS doesn't teach you any of the concepts or skills required for setting up Samba.

Footnote: One of those people is Andy Tridgell, a former colleague with whom I used to talk regularly. He is definitely in the genius category. Strangely, he could never understand why my Samba setup at home was always on the edge of disaster.


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## BostonBSD (Jan 17, 2021)

Samba would be far easier if the config options didn't change so much between point releases.  One samba config file I had for 4.11 didn't work with 4.12 without a little fine tuning. 

I never set up an NFS server, it looks comparative to FTP, maybe slightly more involved.

Given that Windows has an NFS client option, I definitly would consider using it to replace samba if it works with network discovery.


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## Speedy (Jan 17, 2021)

For download only webfs works great, you can use it of course in parallel with FTP, NFS, Samba, whatnot.


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## BostonBSD (Jan 17, 2021)

Alternativeto.net said that webfs was discontinued, I went to their website and checked the fbsd repository and it looks like the most recent version [and the one on the repository] "1.21" came out in 2004.

I checked git and there is something called webfs being developed right now, but I'm not sure if it's the same application.


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## Speedy (Jan 18, 2021)

In actuality webfs is (was?) a super light web server. You can use any light HTTP server to do the same, just configure it to give directory listing.


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