I recently replaced an ancient laptop with a slightly less ancient one.
- host for backups for three other machines
- serve files I don’t necessarily need on the new machine
- relatively lightweight - “server” is ~15 years old
- relatively simple - I’d rather not manage a dozen docker containers.
- internal-facing
- does NOT need to handle Android and friends. I can use sync-thing for that if I need to.
Left to my own devices I’d probably rsync for 90% of that, but I’d like to try something a little more pointy-clicky or at least transparent in my dotage.
Edit: Not SAMBA (I freaking hate trying to make that work)
Edit2: for the young’uns: NFS (linux “network filesystem”)
Edit 3: LAN only. I may set up a VPN connection one day but it’s not currently a priority. (edited post to reflect questions)
Last Edit: thanks, friends, for this discussion! I think based on this I’ll at least start with NFS + my existing backups system (Mint’s thing, which is I think just a gui in front of rcync). May play w/ modern SAMBA if I have extra time.
Ill continue to read the replies though - some interesting ideas.
I’ve always had weird issues with SMB like ghost files, issues with case sensitivity (zfs pool), it dropping out and me having to reboot to re-establish the connection… Since switching to Linux and using NFS, it’s been almost indistinguishable from a native drive for my casual use (including using a ssd pool as a steam library…)
I can definitely say in the past I had similar experiences. I haven’t really had any problems with SMB in the last 5 years that I can recall. It really was a shit show back in the day, but it’s been rock solid for me anyway.