enterprise-ubuntu team mailing list archive

[Ballock Tokarski <boleslaw.tokarski@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, Florian,

I feel the challenge to defend Linux here :)

Ok, now "Microsoft Windows is at least 5 years ahead all possibilities of
detailed access rights on file shares". I don't know what the colleagues
think about, I'd say it's a simple ACL (access control list) on a
file/directory. Nothing really fancy these times. ACLs are common. You have
them in next to all Linux-related filesystems, just as you do on
Microsoft's NTFS. You generally don't use them on an enterprise-less Ubuntu
system, as the number of users using it is limited (you and perhaps some
family/friends).

For Linux to Linux filesharing NFSv3 is the most commonly used. AFAIK Linux
has support for ACLs in NFSv3 for some time already (kernel version 2.6.26
released July 2008). It seems it's on by default in Ubuntu 12.04. Quoting
the kernel config "Some NFS servers support an auxiliary NFSv3 ACL protocol
that Sun added to Solaris but never became an official part of the NFS
version 3 protocol.  This protocol extension allows applications on NFS
clients to manipulate POSIX Access Control Lists on files residing on NFS
servers.". So it beats the theory that NFSv3 haasn't been improved since
1995.

NFSv4 is a totally different protocol, so no wonder some companies have
problems implementing it. As far as I know it works pretty well under Linux
already. That said, I know there is some more difficulties configuring it
(name mapping service is required, I'd advise going with Kerberos for that
and that might come as even more troublesome to start with). I am also
aware of a number of broken SAN appliances that supposedly implement NFSv4,
but are bugged. I know my friends recently dug up a problem on NetApps that
rendered NFSv4 useless there.

If you want to talk Windows, you can use CIFS. I believe HP added some CIFS
extended attributes that lets you share files between Linux/Unix machines
without using Unix attributes, so you can use that too... Oh, and I heard
that Linux CIFS implementation beats Windows's own native one
performance-wise.

Well, use whichever suits you best. the "detailed access rights" are there
already.

Cheers,
Ballock


On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Florian Bieber <florian.bieber@xxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> in discussion with colleagues about ubuntu client user accessing file
> shares, someone said that Microsoft Windows is at least 5 years ahead all
> possibilities of detailed access rights on file shares.
>
> Sun created NFSv3 in 1995 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1813 and seems
> not further improved. NFSv4 exists, but because of many problems, nobody
> seems to use it.
>
> What linux file share rights management solution can compete with the
> detailed rights management of actual Windows file shares?
>
> Thanks for help in advance!
>
> regards,
> Florian
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