setting up samba

I set up Samba today on my Linux machine so that I could use it as a file storage location and map a network drive from my Windows XP laptop, which was running out of hard disk space. I made my home directory on Linux a readonly Samba share, and I set up iptables on … Continue reading “setting up samba”

I set up Samba today on my Linux machine so that I could use it as a file storage location and map a network drive from my Windows XP laptop, which was running out of hard disk space. I made my home directory on Linux a readonly Samba share, and I set up iptables on the Linux machine to accept connections of state NEW on port 445/tcp and 445/udp only when coming from my Windows laptop. So now I basically have an extra 25GB of storage space for about 5 minutes of work. Not to mention that the access speed over 100Mbit LAN is basically as fast as my laptop’s local hard disk. Yup, that’s how slow my laptop hard disk is. Seeking is obviously slower, but once it gets going, movies play fast enough that they’ll never skip, and I could easily burn a CD off the network and never worry about a buffer underrun.

While writing this entry, I just came up with an interesting thought: what if I actually built Firefox over the network, meaning have the source and object files on a network drive, and just bring them over to my computer for processing? I wonder if that would actually compile faster than if everything was local. I think I’m going to have to try that out at some point and see. Definitely seems like an interesting experiment.

All in all I had a good day, went for a swim as well which was nice and relaxing. Then undid all the exercise goodness by having a Dominos dinner.