Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am exploring the my preferred method of accessing network drives. Let’s get started!
Storage of any kind is only as good as your ability to access it. On your typical modern, end-user computer, long-term storage is typically limited to a hard drive of some kind, and possibly some sort of cloud storage solution.
On another inbound tangential subject, file transfers within my family’s home network have thus far has been limited to using a USB thumb drive or bouncing it off an online host. But thumb drives are often already laden with data, and size limitations plague e-mail and chat services. SSH and SCP have helped, but they are a bit of a pain to get working smoothly.
File sharing has been around almost as long as computers could communicate. Different protocols have different strengths and weaknesses, and the best one for you can differ depending on your situation. I’m largely dealing with Linux, and NFS speaks Linux/Unix natively, or so I hear. The other easy choice would be SMB, a protocol with more overhead that Microsoft wants its customers to upgrade to Pro or Server to avoid having to use for file sharing. And according to data gathered over at Furhatakgun, I am drawing my own conclusion that SMB has more overhead per file than NFS.
If I would just follow a tutorial, I could have a much faster time with a lot less understanding. My target project was to backup my laptop’s home directory in preparation for migrating my drive from external to a newly installed internal drive.
I would have to say enabling NFS was easy only in the shallowest of terms. After enabling the protocol overall, I found my way over to the appropriate network share and had to resort to whitelisting my IP to mount that share (as root). And at that, I literally had no permissions to read, write, or execute that share — even as root. chmod!
All I know is that I am on the way to understanding, but I have much to learn before I can properly report back on it. For example, I’ve read that I need to have my NAS account name match my local user name. I’ve also read some about hard vs soft mounting, and how setting it up right can minimize the chance of data corruption.
Final question: Have you ever recognized that you know something, but not well enough to teach it?