10.1 smb vs afp

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WhateverJoe

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At first I had trouble using smb://this/that ... but I tracked the trouble down to having Dave for X installed... uninstalled Dave and everything works as it should ....

But here my new gripe ... I mostly use my TiBook these days, and use it for work at work and for fun at home....

I always forget to unmount any mounted shares before leaving any given location .. and as with 10.0.4 even closing the lid to my powerbook for over a minute disconnects any afp shares that might be mounted..

I'm use to "Whatever has disconnected" messages with afp shares.. but have any of you folks noticed what happens with an smb mounted share, when your powerbook is put to sleep via closing the lid, .... NOTHING !!!

I have yet to have a mounted smb share to disconnect for anything....

AND HERE is what triped me out ....

While at work and on the network , mounting an NT share ... doing what ever ... it's time to go home... I close the lid pack up and go home.. where, when I open the lid, my network switches to wireless which is online via cable modem 24/7 and the share is still mounted and I can still access it .. with out one hick-up .... NOW THAT SIMPLY ROCKS!

So back to my Subject ..... From my current experience ... smb is a lot better in my opinion ... afp shares drop when I move in and out of wireless range real quick ... a bird can fly by and my afp share disconnects ... it's just something I have been living with ....

So now, I want to find out how to use smb://whatever/whatever to connect and mount an OS X volume ;-)
 
If Apple doesn't have the full Samba installed but just a "client" type thing, you may have to install Samba. Then I suggest you use the SWAT tool (through a web browser) that comes with Samba to configure it to share the folders you're interested in. Voila! Permanent connection.

-Rob
 
smb is stateless so that it will never disconnect, but that it just might not work if you try to use it. Running an application off of it would be sketchy. SMB is bad at negotiating a network, doesn't comply well with URL naming (DNS and IP stuff) and instead has its own naming crap which is generally regarded as foul. Although less chatty on a network than Appletalk, SMB browsing seldom works correctly on a large network. In my experience, the consistent way to get it to wark is to have a linux browse master in your neighborhood and on your subnet/LAN. Also, SMB uses different ports for stuff and may be a whore to get through a firewall (my current issue)

AFP, integrates fairly well with the original Appletalk, and once instantiated over IP uses only 1 port and kicks ass through most firewalls without any configuration. It keeps file forks, updates itself automatically (no/fewer stale folder views) but is a stated connection. It needs to know it has access to the server, and the server needs to know what clients are connected. This allows timely updating, but is a burden on your network, and can cause seemingly pointless disconnects.

webDAV. Makes firewalls happy. In fact may be too firewall savvy and may end up being its own security nightmare in the future. Doesn't do file forks (only AFP does, but that doesn't matter for most stuff now) is stateless so that your connection can drop and unless you're using it, it doesn't hurt you. Name resolution is web like and URL / IP based only. Making this a the simplest and sweetest file transfer method for the future. (possibly)

ftp - can do anything, can go through most firewalls without problems, can be made to preserve file forks, is as old and mature as UNIX, can be stated or stateless depending on server and client configuration, is fast. I really want ftp to be another mount method under OS X. That would be super sweet. It seems to be the ultimate protocol, I don't understand why more people aren't into it. It could use some better server config tools than are standardly available, maybe.
 
Originally posted by theed

webDAV. Makes firewalls happy. In fact may be too firewall savvy and may end up being its own security nightmare in the future.
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Agreed. Not only webDAV, but the whole next-generation of networking services are all converging on port 80; not very cool. Microsoft's dotNET is basically RPC over HTTP/port 80. How are we going to firewall that?



ftp - can do anything, can go through most firewalls without problems, can be made to preserve file forks, is as old and mature as UNIX, can be stated or stateless depending on server and client configuration, is fast. I really want ftp to be another mount method under OS X. That would be super sweet. It seems to be the ultimate protocol, I don't understand why more people aren't into it. It could use some better server config tools than are standardly available, maybe.
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I think what's lacking is a secure authentication; I'm sorry but mounting an FTP volume with my username and password makes me very nervous (I can do this with Linux http://ftpfs.sourceforge.net/ )
 
Excellent point, so then what I'd really like to see is widespread adoption of sftp and have it integrated like the samba client. That would definitely rock. And as network odministrators start blocking services by header and content on port 80, they'll be glad to know that they can control sftp access by port without overloading the processors on their cisco routers unlike webdav and .net.

I'm gonna suggest this to Apple. They might just be cool enough to understand how sweet it all could be. I also think that on a per machine, ftp/sftp services should be configurable as a machine wide service like it is now, or a deniod except for share-point service like AppleShare was. But if they allow this kind of configurability, what will sell their server product? Oh the conundrum.

... and for those of you just tuning in, the objection to ftp was that it sends username and password in plain text. That's not cool.
 
Actually, ftp also does everything else unencrypted, too, which some might find a problem. I believe sftp fixes this, also.
 
sftp deos indeed fix that as well, although I generally don't consider that to be a problem. I can see how it could be beneficial. To the best of my knowledge the other protocols only encrypt username/password and let the data go in the clear. Know anything about that? E-mail is also awful about being in the clear everywhere. Pop3 standard is all plain text.
 
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