Filepro and Samba

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Nov 08, 2006, Walter Vaughan wrote:
>Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
>>That said, there is one point I don't think Mark made: "is Linux a
>>better choice than Windows as a server OS for the things it can do?"
>
>After spending the past six days with Java developers who thnk a Mac is the 
>deal, why not a Mac to learn unix and serve Samba? Even our hardcore 
>Windows guy wants a  Mac now..

I certainly think that's a great idea!  While I have Linux boxes in use by
some very computer illiterate people doing normal office productivity
things without the benefit of the worms that attack the Microsoft Virus,
Windows, in the last couple of years, we've been recommending Macs to these
people with excellent results.

We still use Linux for most of our server applications, with a few FreeBSD
boxes thrown in for flavour, but even I use a Mac Mini for all my desktop
work except for my laptop which has SuSE 9.2 Professional Linux on it.

While I agree with Mark that Linux/Unix systems require some knowledge to
use most effectively, I'm not sure I would go quite as far as he on this.
At least with *nix systems, it's possible to learn to diagnose problems and
fix them, whereas it's rare to find a Windows ``expert'' who knows more
than the Three R's of Windows, Reboot, Reboot, Reinstall.

The recent versions of SuSE Linux have an excellent graphical
administration tool that allows the inexperienced to ``learn by
destroying'' with relative ease.  Samba comes with swat, an excellent web
based management interface, which I find very useful when I have to deal
with Samba configuration.

Another factor with *nix systems is that it's easy to allow secure shell
access to the system so that somebody who knows the system can get in
remotely to diagnose and fix problems that are beyond the competence of the
local folks.

We have numerous *nix installations where there's nobody on staff who knows
much more than how to change backup tapes.  A typical example is a trucking
and warehousing company that has a Linux server and four Mac Minis that
they use primarily to run my accounting software in xterms to the server.
They use OpenOffice.org for word processing, spread sheets, etc, and
Thunderbird and FireFox for e-mail and web access.  I originally replaced a
Sage Micro box there in 1992 with an SCO 3.2v4.0 system on an Intel 303
Tower box.  That box was replaced with a Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 box in 1998,
and I just replaced that box with a new SuSE Linux system a couple of weeks
ago.  I doubt that I have 30 days billable time with this customer since
installing the original system 14 years ago.

I have found serious issues running things like QuickBooks with the files
on Samba shares, mostly due to the brain-dead file locking mechanisms under
Windows.  I'm a firm believer that data applications should really be run
on a server where things like record locking can be handled in shared
memory, not with a bunch of separate machines accessing the data files in
the file system and depending on some kind of file locking mechanism.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

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