Samba saves the day

I've always saw Samba as this weird big complicated monster that's ultra hard to configure. I'm not the type of person who wishes to mix stacks of Microsoft and Linux so I never really tried to connect to workgroups, but in a household it actually comes pretty handy since some of your family members will inevitably use Windows, it's also easier to share stuff like music, etc. (although in all honesty I won't be trying this any time soon)

So my sister asked me if I could do a backup of her dying netbook and I complied to her request. I connected a external 2TB HDD and noticed that there was something wonky about windows not recognizing the USB, so it was already becoming impossible to come up with a solution and I don't have any other computer so... what I thought up was "why not try samba and connect to her laptop directly?" Granted it's not the fastest solution in the world, as I speak it's going at 1-1.5 MiB/s according to the notification system, it could have been so much faster with USB at 20 MiB/s but oh well, you gotta come up with weird solutions all the time.

So I plugged the 2TB HDD to my laptop, went ahead and configured SAMBA to connect to my custom workgroup and there we go, it was fully working. It didn't let me go to C$ for some reason though, even though the account should be an administrator one.

She's a non-techie person and I kinda threw that jab that some of us do: "hey, why don't you try linux in your system?"

I'm waiting for the reply hoping it's a yes. Maybe I'll go with Debian jessie with GNOME 3.14 which I have been trying out on my virtual box. It might be perfect for her, else, Ubuntu all the way.

For more about Samba:

http://www.samba.org/
Debian Handbook section

It's a netbook. I don't like them much, mostly because my hands are big and they are too tiny. I didn't have any USB flash drives available, well, more like it has gone missing , else that would have been my first option!

Yea the hard drive is working... it just that the netbook has been a victim of viruses/malware.

Also... Geez! I tried GNOME 3.14 yesterday and I still can't get used to it. It feels like I'm using a tablet, it's all backwards. I might just settle with Linux Mint MATE or Ubuntu.

When I was working on IT a few months ago there was a live cd with windows xp that could practically do the same by the way. It just a little tougher to look for but it's there. Some coworkers told me that there are plenty of tools for windows to do recoveries. Of course I tried and saw them myself and they were pretty neat. Of course, if you want a faster alternative just download a live cd of whatever distro!


Right now I'm thinking of setting up networking booting (PXE Boot) to do the installations (since I don't have a USB flash drive with me)

I know there was this amazing tool a coworker told me about where you can have ALL linux/rescue cds in one single USB and all you needed was grub to work its magic. GRUB is amazing. If I find the name, I'll link it here. I think you are going to LOVE it. You can put like 80 ISOs and make them all bootable no problem.

Actually here's the tool: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

As for the laptop, it's a Acer netbook. I already backed it up now I'm just looking forward to install a distro.

That's nice! I wish I had a spare computer to use as file server/media server! You know when I was initially planning to work on Jester I thought about "hey, why not run windows applications through WINE using NFS"

By the way, my sister said yes. She was impressed by my desktop so it's time to nuke that netbook with Debian love!

I just finished installing it. My opinion on GNOME 3 has shifted a bit and now I see the value behind it.

One thing for certain, fixing network problems in linux is still hell. I solved a wireless driver problem which was easy but now the network-manager is playing hide and seek.

I gotta say she's gonna love Shotwell. I need to ensure to install her Office 2010 since imho, it's better and I don't think she'll grow used to LibreOffice. (I prefer Office 2007)

Installed skype, spotify, flash. I think that's it for today. I'm lagging behind on my chores/studies setting up this laptop.

Question: Do you use SAMBA to share files too with other linux boxes?

That's what I thought. I was looking for an specific mutually accepted sharing protocol but it seems it's either Samba or NFS. WebDav seems to be around... oh well I'll just go for Samba. It just that gnome 3 automatically used webdav and I didn't like that at all.

I'm running into some problems I guess. I thought it would work out of the box but Samba seems to have its quirks in Debian compared to other distros.

But uh... did you use your file manager (nautilus, dolphin) to do the sharing? seems to be quite lacking if you have to set up folders manually

I solved it... it was a stupid setting that drove me nuts, ugh.

Note to self: Buy that debian handbook!