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Hi all, One of my friends company wanted to setup a file server, preferably Linux. They want to use this to backup files from their windows and Mac. It’s a very small company with around 10 users. I was thinking about using ubuntu server, but bit confused about the file server to choose. Since they are using windows and Mac, which one will be best? They want their users to have separate folders for file storage with permissions, so other people can’t access the files? What are your suggestions? There are plenty of guides about samba, afp etc, but would like to hear from you guys, please advice.

5 Spice ups
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Samba and NFS seem to be the way to go.

With 10 users Samba will be a breeze to setup. I use both (on the same folders even).

If it is going to be file server only, you might want to take a look at Openfiler or freenas instead of Ubuntu. I am using Openfiler, but I know a lot of people prefer freenas

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Thanks for the quick reply.
I would like to try samba and NFS. Just want to know if user based folder restrictions can be applied to both? And what about mouting that to user computers?

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yes samba, and then put together an ACL on the file server… this gives you access control over the files… and allows you to maintain logs based off of the acl list… super simple to set up…

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But there are posts abut speed/performance issues of accessing samba shares from MAC. I am downloading ubuntu server to test in my VM. Please let me know your experience.
Thanks a lot for the help guys.

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kcorbin wrote:

yes samba, and then put together an ACL on the file server… this gives you access control over the files… and allows you to maintain logs based off of the acl list… super simple to set up…

+1

Samba is the way to go since you have a windows client.

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Great. Installing ubuntu server in my vm and setup samba. Just worried how will it work in mac. Do u think samba will be good for mac too?

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we use ubuntu file servers here throughout and have macs and windows box’s connecting to them all day every day with NO noticable speed issues…

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Great! Am trying it and let you know the result.

Thank you so much

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are you going to do more than file servers with those boxes?

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Skip the distro install and install freeNAS or openFiler .

They will handle most any kind of mount and will make life easy for backup. FreeNAS even has some sort of iTunes data repository connection that I know nothing about except it is there as a standard feature.

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Will be talking to my friend about this and check if they only want file backup in that box.

From spiceworks posts I think openfiler is a good option.

When spoke to my friend about this initially he wanted to have this server for his users to save files everyday in the evening as a backup. What I am thinking was to install Ubuntu server, with some sort of free backup tools (Crashplan) apart from the normal file sharing, so he can schedule a copy of the files backedup in his home. So even if something breaks as this will be a single stand alone machine, they will have a safe copy . :slight_smile:

They are currently using a windows server and they manually copy the stuffs everyday to an external hard drive manually. They want to switch to a linux based server.

Can openfiler or any others can have this option?

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Use Samba for Windows and NFS for Mac, you can run both and I am pretty sure they both can have granular ACLs. As far as openfiler backing up to an external Hard Drive you whould be able to do this, openfiler is just a linux distribution liek any other, it has just been customized and designed to be a NAS/SAN device.