Linux file server

I warned my wife that I was going to be blogging about Linux today. I think she appreciated the warning and didn't even give me the eye roll I have scome to expect when I geek out on her.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to create a Linux file server so that I could share a requirements database that I am maintaining. Of course (or maybe not so of course) the database is in MS Access and the clients that will be connecting to it are Java applications in a Windows XP environment. Of course this meant that I would have to install Samba to share files back and forth between the Windows and Linux boxes. I got it working all right, but there were a few hiccups along the way:
  • I first formatted the file system in Ubuntu as ext3. That was a bad idea as I kept getting access denied messages when attempting to write to the shared directory from Windows. To solve that dilemma I resized the ext3 partition down 4.6GB and then created a data partition formatting it as NTFS. That worked great.
  • I, originally, thought that I could configure Samba and created all of the data directories without the use of a GUI Samba client. That was a bad idea too. Note to self: if there is a GUI that makes configuration of a program easier use it.
  • I actually took the above note to heart and used a live CD version of gparted to resize the OS partition and create the data partition. It took a while to download the .iso and burn the CD, but once in it was very straightforward.
All of this to say that I can read and write to the shared directory now from the Windows and Linux boxes. I copied the requirements database to the directory on the Linux box, tweaked a configuration file, and can now access it from my Windows machine using the OSRMT client. I need to test it out on someone else's machine to see if I can grant them access to it as well.

Any volunteers?

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