NFS vs SMB and umasks

Kurt Granroth kurt@granroth.org
Thu, 8 Mar 2001 00:22:44 -0700


I am trying to figure out why I would want to use NFS over SMB for a
"public" directory.. and am failing.

I have a directory (/space) on my main server (fastlane) that is
public in the sense that I want all hosts and all users in my internal
network to be able to read and write to it.  No matter which user
writes a file to it, I want all users to be able to do everything to
it.

Now my first inclination is to use NFS since that is the gold standard
for distributed filesystems in Unix.  Unfortunately, I can't figure
out how to force a particular umask, dmask, or user on the files.
Some users on some of my systems are capable of writing files that
can't be accessed by other users on other systems.

With SMB, this is pretty trivial.. I can enforce the proper masks and
users and everybody is happy.

However, I know that SMB is frowned upon in general so I would *like*
to use NFS is possible.

So my questions are: Can I do what I need with NFS without resorting
to some cron script changing the permissions on the server?  If so, is
there really any reason why I would absolutely prefer NFS over SMB?
-- 
Kurt Granroth            | http://www.granroth.org
KDE Developer/Evangelist | SuSE Labs Open Source Developer
granroth@kde.org         | granroth@suse.com
            KDE -- Conquer Your Desktop