Samba (Or Other Network Sharing Protocol) Over the Internet

Ian

I'm getting a Zaurus soon (as in, a few days) along with a CF 802.11b card. I came up with a nifty idea for my house, which involves mounting my server over the network to get my MP3's. I figured, if that works, why can't i take that to a new level, and set up a server to share my MP3's over the internet?

I've heard that Samba has many security flaws, but it's what I'm using now, so it was my first choice. I've never used NFS, but i've heard good things about it. I've heard of several other ways to do it, but i've never tried them.

Long story short, I would make a second sever, with just MP3s, mounted on a second HD as ro. Share that drive as ro, and as far as i know, i'd be perfectly safe. it sounds too easy though, so i know there's a catch somewhere.

if this would in fact work, when broadband and WiFi become the norm, i believe this will be what many people do. it's an interesting solution, and sure as hell beats the crap out of anything eles i've seen, so long as you have an internet connection.

So, if everyone and anyone would poke as many holes through this ideas as possible, so i can make it work, i'd be very happy. I know there's a few stupid ideas in this, please, point them out, help me learn.

metacove · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 148

Whether the solution is nfs or samba you will have to use a vpn to get security unless you want to test nfs4 or sfs.

Ian · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 10:27 am Post subject:

i don't think i can count on a vpn, as i won't be controlling the internet access all the time. i think i can set it up at home so that if the computer is cracked into, not much will happen to the rest of the network (smoothwall.org makes a nifty *nix firewall that runs on any old computer, very customizable).

in that regard, what is nfs4 and sfs? i'm not familiar with those, and i'd be willing to fool around with them if i could get this to work.

petu · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 10:40 am Post subject:

If you only need read access for your files why don't you put up a http or https server? There's optional ssl-support for samba that you should use if you make samba shares available to the internet.
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arlequin · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 10:42 am Post subject:

Why not using SSH Tunneling :?:

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Ian · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 6:43 pm Post subject:

the main goal of this is so i have read access of my MP3s anywhere that i have broadband internet (or, at least enough to stream MP3s). I don't want it to be MP3 radio, where i have to listen to one song until it's over, then it jumps to some other random song. similarly, i don't want to have to download the MP3s for them to play, as my Zaurus doesn't have that much room on it.

one solution that i've come up with is a simple samba share, cause it's like the network share is local (as far as XMMS or any other music program is concerned). i believe that http(s) will not actually work that way, although i may be wrong. if i can make this work through http(s) then i'd do it that way, as it's actually more preferable, cause anywhere would work (my school has silly filters, and they try to block every port but 80).

as to SSH tunneling. my school blocks that. don't know why. no one besides me knows what it is, and i doubt you could use it to hurt the school. i think that if i could make SSH send and receive on port 80 (whatever the default http port is) then it would work anywhere, i think, but an electrical engineer who helped with a club at my school tried to SSH out, and he was unable to.

i could settle for an MP3 radio type thing (i think i've seen several in portage) but i would like the ability to control what song is being played, or at minium, skip forward/back. as i said, i don't really know what i'm doing, so i'm looking for the easiest and safest solution here (aren't we all? :p).

petu · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 6:59 pm Post subject:

I believe it's possible to use http(s) shares for your needs but it depends what player you are using. At least xmms has a feature to add files to playlist from internet.
_________________
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the
ark; professionals built the Titanic. -- Anonymous

Ian · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:52 pm Post subject:

well, i'm getting my Zaurus friday, so i won't know what's on it till lthen, but i'm assuming XMMS is on it. i know some MP3 player is on it.

i just tried that way with XMMS on my computer right now. it seems to work for one song, but i don't want to type each song in, it'd get kind of tedius fast. if there's another way to enter data, and the Zaurus comes with XMMS, this would work. if there's no other way, well, yeah, that's way to tedius to enter all the songs in one by one.