smbfs vs cifs

 No Responses »
Feb 122008
 

Because I had hangs on Ubuntu with smbfs mounted drivers (the new 1.5TB WorldBook and my USB2 drive from the laptop) I Googled around for some solutions. One thing that I noticed is that most newer forum posts tell you to mount the drives as type “cifs” instead of “smbfs”. Most of the time I can reproduce a “hang” when going to a directory on my WorldBook and clicking on it (in the filebrowser) so that it would start to generate tiny icons of the pictures inside the directory. After having done one icon, the system would freeze until I killed the filebrowser and after a while I unmounted and remounted the drive.
The hang does not occur when mounting the drive as type cifs. The mounting process itself seems (did no accurate testing) faster too. I’ll let you know if this solves the problem completely.

BTW cifs is the successor to smbfs, but it is said that it cannot handle shares from Windows 95 and Windows 98, but that’s not a real problem for most people. Cifs is more actively maintained as well, so bugfixes and security patches are likely to find its way faster to cifs than to smbfs.

Plenty of diskspace – part 2

 No Responses »
Feb 102008
 

Linux (my Ubuntu) seems to have some problems with SMBFS filesystems. I have the USB2-drive of my laptop mounted in a similar fashion as the WD-MyBook, and that has some hangs occassionally too. So I don’t suspect the MyBook (for now).
Other than that, the MyBook isn’t superfast. It’s only connected at 100Mbit now (it has GLAN interface), I don’t know if that will explain it.

The Mionet software on Windows XP stopped working. For some reason it thinks the MyBook is offline. I’ve resetted the drive and the laptop (poweroff -> poweron), but to no change.

Windows Vista has problems with the x-bit in the fileprotections. On Linux my files are created with rwxr-xr-x fileprotection. Probably because of Windows Vista’s excellent (*ahum*) UAC that does not like the execute-bit on external drives, it chooses not to show ANY file with that bit on. Changing the filemode to rw-r–r– does the trick. It took me a while to discover that. Windows XP has NO problem with the execute-bit.

So my first impression: cheap storage, lousy (Windows only) software. No further comments for now.

Plenty of diskspace

 No Responses »
Feb 082008
 

I bought a Western Digital MyBook WorldEdition II, the 1.5TByte one. Pictures are on my desktop disks, on DVD’s, on the server. I have a lot of audio files I play during the day on the external disk of my laptop. So it was time for something more centralized, since the gf also like to see my pictures, and have room to store hers.

You need a Windows machine to get the thing up and running. The software is a Java-program that basically enables you to communicate with the device. After the initial setup (static IP, etc.), you can just use the machine like any other share on your network (with Windows, or with Linux using smbfs). To change settings, you login to the internal webserver.

The device is mostly quiet, but sometimes the cooling fan(s?) come alive. Not for too long, so it’s not something to worry about. I did not do any timings yet, but the drive seems fast. The connecting-to-the-share process is faster than it is when connecting to a Windows share, which is not really a surprise. You can create different shares, different users, with three levels (none, read-only, full) of access per share.

I’ll keep you updated on how the disk behaves when filling up. I’m copying pictures onto it now, starting with 2004 (older is not on harddisk but on CD/DVD).

 Posted by at 01:49

40

 1 Response »
Feb 022008
 

Wednesday I turned 40. Yep, the big four-oh. It is said that life starts at 40. Up until now, there has been little to no changes I noticed. I’m still poor, I’m still balding, I’m still short. Guess these are not the things that change when your life starts. Can someone fill me in on the blanks?

 Posted by at 01:35