[SOLVED] Sharing folders between two Kubuntu machines

[bill-lancaster]

I have two pcs sharing the same wlan.
I have set 'sharing' on both pcs through Dolphin and also set permissions
I can see the home folder in Dophin's Network section but can't see any files.
My need to share files is fairly short term.
Other threads on this forum haven't helped so any new advice would be welcome.

[Snowhog]

I have two laptops on my router. Both connected by wire, but both can use the Wireless on the router.

I have my main laptop set to be accessed from the other via Dolphin. To do so, I added the following to the /etc/fstab file on the other (not my main) laptop:

xxx.xxx.xx.xxx:/home/paul /home/paul/shared nfs rw,hard,intr,noexec 0 0

The xxx's is the IP address of the main laptop.

From the other laptop, my main laptop appears in Dolphin under Devices (on the other laptop, I'm running 12.10; 12.04 on my main laptop). I have full access to the main laptop from the other laptop.

[vinnywright]

@Snowhog will he not nead NFS to be installed and set up for that to work ?
I agree that NFS is the best way to go for 2 linux boxes

hear is a how to ,, NFSHowTo « Little Girl's Mostly Linux Blog

VINNY

[Snowhog]

@Vinny

Hehe. That's the site I found that helped me get my two laptops setup. It's straight forward and very easy to follow.

[vinnywright]

@Vinny

Hehe. That's the site I found that helped me get my two laptops setup. It's straight forward and very easy to follow.

,,,,,yes I think we have been using it sense 9.10-10.04 or so ,,,,,,,,, great minds think alike

VINNY

[bill-lancaster]

Thanks for the advice, I tried to follow Vinny's link (http://mostlylinux.wordpress.com/network/nfshowto/) but at this point:-

~$ sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap

one machine (Compaq) was OK but the other (Dell) had a problem. This is the problem part of the output in Terminal:-

Note, selecting 'rpcbind' instead of 'portmap'
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
aumix-common libcapi20-3 libmpg123-0 libnss-winbind libpam-winbind ttf-droid ttf-umefont ttf-unfonts-core update-manager-kde winbind wine-gecko1.4
winetricks

so that:-
:$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap
doesn't work:-

bill@bill-Vostro-200:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap
dpkg-query: package 'portmap' is not installed and no information is available
Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: portmap is not installed.

Now I'm out of my depth and any help would be welcome

[vinnywright]

O yes portmap has been replaced by rpcbind ,,,,,,I can not remember if it even need to be set up or not (but in the tutorial replace rpcbind anywhere it uses portmap) Humm will do some searching

VINNY

[dequire]

For me, it's easier to just use Samba rather than NFS. Adding Samba allows me to access a USB external HD connected to my main PC from any device in teh house. No command line needed. Samba can even be installed right from within Dolphin.

[vinnywright]

For me, it's easier to just use Samba rather than NFS. Adding Samba allows me to access a USB external HD connected to my main PC from any device in teh house. No command line needed. Samba can even be installed right from within Dolphin.

Samba is nice if you have a mix of linux and windows box's ,,,,,,but for *nix boxes NFS is way better , all shares are treated as a part of the local file system, so for instance if you were to try to watch a video on a remote share with Samba it will download a copy to the local box before it can play it (or so it has been for me) , however with NFS it will stream the data as if it were local .

VINNY

O and NFS would let you access that external HD as well

[dequire]

I'll have to test out streaming movies, but for music, files, and pictures it works great. There was a majot release a few months ago, which seemed to improve things quite a bit. I agree NFS is idealistically a better choice, except that it's too hard for a noob to set up. Esp. with external drives. From my POV, if you have to create and edit text files to get it to work properly, it's too hard for the average computer user to use. IMO NFS has been a sore spot for file sharing on Linux for years, only for that reason. In it's aim to bring typical Linux security robestness, it becomes too complicated for the average user to deal with. There's no reason NFS shouldn't be able to be installed and configured via system settings or from within Dolphin.

[bill-lancaster]

Thank you for all your ideas and advice.
I gave it a go! Bear in mind that my two pcs both have 'bill' as the user and I have only one monitor at the moment!
Anyway after substituting 'rpcbind' for 'portmap' I eventualy got to ~$ sudo services rpcbind restart, I got 'unrecognised services' and have to give this up.
Having used Ubuntu since 2008 this my first encounter with this network thing - I'm really astonished at how complex such a simple thing can be.
It must be the result of many re-boots on both machines that the Samba thing is sort of working.

Again thank you all for the help

[Snowhog]

It's as simple as installing the package nfs-common on the PC you want to 'share the other PC' from. So let's say you have PC A and B, and you want to share A with B. Install nfs-common on PC B (sudo apt-get install nfs-common). Then in the /etc/fstab file on PC B, add an entry taking the format:

PC_A_IP_address:directory_to_share /home/username/shared nfs rw,hard,intr,noexec 0 0

Assuming the IP address of PC A is 123.456.78.901 and the username is Sam and we want to share Sam's home directory, and the username on PC B is Joe, the entry would be:

123.456.78.901:/home/Sam /home/Joe/shared nfs rw,hard,intr,noexec 0 0

When both PC's are booted and you launch Dolphin on PC B, /home/Sam on 123.456.78.901 will be shown under Devices.

[bill-lancaster]

Thank you Snowhog, that worked a treat