[RULE] OT: NFS, X-terminal and SSH clients for Windows

[Martin Stricker]

Vadim Plessky wrote:
> 
> Sorry for slightly off-topic, but I am really interested what kind of
> experience do you have guys with such mixed environments (Linux
> server, Windows PCs)

We use such a setup at work (I installed it) using a Red Hat 6.2 server
and mixed WinNT/2k clients. Works like a charm, Samba acts as backup PDC
as well, and squid controls the internet access.

> I just wnat to install working solution for my wife, so that I can
> focus on another things (and she has mail, network disks, etc.
> working)

To have her working on her Win laptop, just configure Samba, squid and
sendmail/ipop3i (or whatever MUA you prefer). Webmin is a great help
here, not only for beginners.


> NOTE: there is no requirement to have "Windows networking"
> operational in this network, so I don't want to install SAMBA and
> would prefer to have NFS file system accessible for Windows clients.

Personally, I prefer Samba over NFS. I have a lot of silent write errors
[1] while using NFS in our very busy network, but never experienced
these with Samba.

[1] With silent write errors I mean this: I write a file to a NFS mount.
I do not get any error (except that it takes a while, but that's no sure
sign), but when I read the file again, only the first parts are written,
the remaining of the file (it has the correct size!) is padded with NULL
bytes. So I stay away from NFS wherever possible. With Samba I always
get an error message if a write fails, with NFS I never got one.

> Plus, I'd like to have some X-terminal software and SSH client so
> that it would be possible to configure that Linux server from another
> computer (due to cost-saving & tight budget, server doesn't have own
> monitor at a moment)

Just like ours.

> So, what would you recomemnd to me as:
> * PC NFS

Stay away from it and use Samba.

> * X-Terminal for Windows

Hummingbird Exceed. http://www.hummingbird.com/ It's commercial (sorry,
I don't know the price), but comes with a *lot* of tools (but no NFS
(which is a product of it's own from them) or SSH). Exceed is a terminal
emulation (with *lots* of options like keyboard remapping) and a full X
server, so you can (if X is installed on the server) run any X programs
and see the Window appear on the Windows computer, and copy data between
Win and Linux applications. I also tested another commercial X sever,
Reflection, but it's just bare bones.

> * SSH client for Windows

Putty. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

> I'd like to use (when posisble) either Open-Source, or "Free to
> Download" software.

Putty is free of charge (BSD license
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/licence.html ). Exceed
is not, but there are free of charge X servers for Win available. I
never used any of them, I'm hapy with Exceed, and the company pays for
it...

> Again, if PC NFS packages are not free (IIRC, Sun was charging for
> their PC NFS software about $495 some time ago ...), I would just
> install SAMBA server and forget about NFS.

That's what I would suggest anyway.

Best regards,
Martin Stricker
-- 
Homepage: http://www.martin-stricker.de/
Linux Migration Project: http://www.linux-migration.org/
Red Hat Linux 7.3 for low memory: http://www.rule-project.org/
Registered Linux user #210635: http://counter.li.org/


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