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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Beginner question about setting up a file server on ubuntu

arandall
July 3rd, 2008, 01:04 PM
I am trying to setup a file server on an ubuntu machine that will have a mounted disk available for upload/download from outside of my home network.

I have an external drive, but since it isn't bus powered, I want to just hook it up to a desktop I have laying around and be able to connect to it from my laptop anywhere I go. Is this possible? If so, how? Is Samba capable of doing something like this?

Thanks for any help
Titan8990
July 3rd, 2008, 01:08 PM
Your best best on something like this is looking into VPNs. I am not sure that it would be a good idea for security reasons to forward smb ports on your router to a file server.

Also you could look into hosting an FTP through apache.
amenszer
July 3rd, 2008, 02:50 PM
Yeah, for accessing your home network from anywhere, VPNs are the way to go.
arandall
July 3rd, 2008, 06:12 PM
Thanks for the replies - is there a nice guide somewhere for how to setup a VPN?
nix4me
July 3rd, 2008, 06:53 PM
I would setup a ssh server on it and use sftp to connect to it.
arandall
July 3rd, 2008, 11:53 PM
I would setup a ssh server on it and use sftp to connect to it.

what's the benefit of doing it that way as opposed to the VPN? From what I understand, a VPN will make it that I can mount the server drive as a local network drive, which seems ideal for me...

Is it just not worth the hassle of having to setup a VPN?
hyper_ch
July 4th, 2008, 02:19 AM
or instead of sftp maybe even sshfs

far simpler to setup ssh server than vpn - I think
Zack McCool
July 4th, 2008, 02:30 AM
what's the benefit of doing it that way as opposed to the VPN? From what I understand, a VPN will make it that I can mount the server drive as a local network drive, which seems ideal for me...

Is it just not worth the hassle of having to setup a VPN?

That depends on how much you need in term of services. Ssh functions as a bit of a VPN on it's own... You can mount drives, forward ports, and the setup is a snap.

Using ssh, I am connected to my home machine from work. I use freenx on top of ssh as a terminal server. That gives me a full desktop. If I want to copy files, I use WinSCP. If I want to forward ports to defeat a firewall, I connect to the ssh server through putty, and forward the ports I need.

SSH is extremely flexible.