Re: Samba vs NFS

Greetings Jennifer,

NFS is by its design (v3 anyway) insecure and requires it to be packaged 
within an acceptable encryption technology (IPSec/SSH) in order for it 
to be secure.  However, be advised that the Linux NFS client is still 
immature (2.4 kernels anyway) and there are various NFS implementations 
that won't work well with it.  For instance, I run a shop that has to 
mount NFS from every UNIX vendor in recent memory.  That makes for QUITE 
a headache to be sure.

That being said, if you do your homework properly (i.e. find the right 
combination of mount options) Secure NFS will work well for you for your 
*nix clients.

Windows is entirely another matter.  Windows cannot, natively, support 
NFS, it will require either Windows Services for Unix (Version 3 is out 
and is fairly capable) or a Samba service.  Since Samba 3.0 came out, 
Samba has been able to imitate a Full Windows 2000 Active Directory 
domain and is quite powerful.  However, extensive testing will be 
required to make sure that your windows systems operate successfully.  
Also, you'll need to make sure your are running a BIND 9.0 compatible 
DNS server, as Windows 2000 was only field tested with BIND 4.x.

However, these two services are not the same thing, as NFS serves the 
*nix crowd, while Samba was developed to allow Windows clients to 
connect to a *nix network.  Also be advised that (as far as I know), 
*nix clients can only temporarily mount a Samba windows share (it will 
no survive a reboot).

As always, if I'm off base here, please feel free to correct me.

RandyW

Jennifer Fountain wrote:

>Hi all:
>My company is looking at samba or NFS to allow our clients to access
>shares from their Windows workstations and their linux ssh sessions.
>>From a security standpoint, which option is "more" secure?  Which option
>is more vulnerable than the other?  Etc, etc ,etc.  I appeciate any
>security information about NFS or samba that you may have.
>
>
>Kind Regards,
>
>Jennifer Fountain
>Systems Administrator
>R&B Distribution
>3400 E Walnut Street
>Colmar, PA  18915
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