Network Discovery in only one direction + # of users question

[rumplestiltskin]

I have a network full of Macs with a couple of Windows boxes, as well. There are enough concurrent users logging into a particular Mac (hanging off of which are three data drives) so that Apple's macOS Server is needed. The drives are formatted GUID/HFS+. Everybody has access to everything "read/write" and everyone knows enough to only "do stuff" in their particular folders so I'm not worried about permissions.

I'm wondering if a decent PC running Mint would be an alternate solution if the Mac Server decides to go belly up. I'd be happy to permit Guest access with read/write/create/delete permissions for the Guest and have everyone log in as "Guest".

So here are a few questions (based on limited experience with a Mint box on my home network):

1. I can log into my Mint machine from my Macs as long as I know the IP address of the machine. Network Discovery doesn't seem to work. If I go the other way (Mint box trying to get into a shared folder on the Mac), the Mac shows up in the Network folder (the one on the Mint Desktop). So no "discovery" from other machines? Not a huge thing but I just wanted to know.

2. I have shared the Desktop folder (on the Mint machine). It automatically is shared at boot (I guess because I didn't check until I logged into the Mint box.) I assume I can share an entire hard drive (one hanging off a USB port) that's not a boot device. (I'll note that I've been able to connect HFS+ Mac HDs to the Mint PC and can see everything contained therein so I guess that's another test that's passed; I won't need to reformat my data drives.) Again, I'll note that giving everyone "Guest" access is fine.

3. Assuming the two questions above have affirmative answers, how many concurrent "filesharing" users can connect to the Mint box? MacOS client has a limit of 10 (half that many if SMB is required for all users).

Thanks very much for any assistance and advice.

Barry

[altair4]

There's two things about your post that has made me hesitant to reply:

It's not clear if you want a samba solution or something else like AFP. I have no experience in AFP.

HFS+. I have very little practically no experience with hfs+ on Linux.

1. I can log into my Mint machine from my Macs as long as I know the IP address of the machine. Network Discovery doesn't seem to work. If I go the other way (Mint box trying to get into a shared folder on the Mac), the Mac shows up in the Network folder (the one on the Mint Desktop). So no "discovery" from other machines? Not a huge thing but I just wanted to know.

If this is a samba related question you can basically do what macOS does naturally:

Create a file:

Code: Select all

gksu xed /etc/avahi/services/samba.service

Add this to the file:

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<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
   <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h SMB</name> ## Display Name
   <service>
       <type>_smb._tcp</type>
       <port>445</port>
   </service>
</service-group>

Save the file. You shouldn't need to do anything else but just in case you might want to restart the avahi service:

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sudo service avahi-daemon restart

From macOS you should see in Finder this Mint box as "some-host-name SMB"

Note: Starting with version 17.10 Ubuntu does this automatically - using a different technique but still using avahi ( bonjour ) by default. Mint should do this with the next release as well as long as it follows Ubuntu 18.04.

2. I have shared the Desktop folder (on the Mint machine). It automatically is shared at boot (I guess because I didn't check until I logged into the Mint box.) I assume I can share an entire hard drive (one hanging off a USB port) that's not a boot device.

Something added via USB presents an unusual problem. It will automount to something under the login user's name like /media/altair/#LABEL. But Linux prevents everyone except altair from gaining access to $LABEL. You can fix that in smb.conf with a line: force user = altair. Where you put that line depends on how you created the samba share.

3. Assuming the two questions above have affirmative answers, how many concurrent "filesharing" users can connect to the Mint box? MacOS client has a limit of 10 (half that many if SMB is required for all users).

That one I do not know. I have had as many as 12 users here on my little network but they all were not mounting shares to this box simultaneously.