Marc Chamberlin said the following on 02/06/2011 10:29 PM:
Then it appears that NFS is a dead end for me. I tried to export the mount point itself with the following added to my exports file -
I did say that I thought with all your fiddling your configuration is buqqered up somewhere.
The reason I think this is that "It works for me" I've done - albeit on the USB port on my server - what I've been telling you. And not doing the things I've been telling you NOT to do.
I've been following the normal Linux conventions and not fighting them or bitching about them.
Yes I can successfully mount USB storage devices on the server, export them via NFS, mount them via NFS on my laptop and access them
I've tried this with the crappy little 16M and 64M things I've been given at trade shows and with a 2G USB Drive on which I have a bootable system. The drive, being a drive, is slower than the solid state devices. I've tried this on the USB1 and USB2.0 ports.
I'm happy that what I've been telling you to do works 'cos "It works for me".
My conclusion is:
You've Got Gremlins Anton - Using such sarcasm and telling me your system works, therefore I have screwed something up, is NOT helpful. I STRONGLY disagree with you
But then I am exporting the device, not the mount point. When you mount the device is BELOW the mount point, and as I said and you have verified, NFS won't go past the mount point. This I do not understand and makes NO sense to me. I have tried to export /dev/sdc1, /media/MyPassport, and /mnt/usbdrive all to no avail. What am I trying to mount, in all three of these cases, the is "BELOW
On 2/7/2011 4:57 AM, Anton Aylward wrote: that I am trying to do something in a wrong (non-Linux way). Copying or moving files from one file system device to another should be easy, straightforward and just plain work. That IS a concept long understood by computer users. As for security and permissions, that too should be easy to configure so as to both accomplish safety, and maintain usability. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT MY APPLICATION IS, you nor anyone else has the right to force users to transfer files via some sort of staging process, use central repositories, servers etc. That is a decision the users should be able to make for themselves. If NFS cannot handle this, conceptually easy task, then NFS IS BROKEN OR BADLY DESIGNED. If I have somehow misconfigured NFS, autofs, or the nfsserver, then I need to understand how and why. And so far I have not succeeded... I have tried to expose everything I have done and you have not told me anything specific other than to try and convince me that my process is wrong. And I repeat, what I want to accomplish, transferring files across a network, directly to a mounted USB drive, is NOT wrong. If you disagree with that, then we must simply agree to disagree and move on. the mount point"? It has become clear that I cannot mount anything "ABOVE" the mount point, like / and then expect to be able to access /media/MyPassport, because of an NFS restriction. OK, but I am exporting THE mount point and that should be sufficient for NFS since I am giving my blessing to NFS to export THE mount point. What do you mean by "BELOW"? That just does not make any kind of sense! A far better answer would have given examples. Explain what would work, and perhaps what does not work with reasons why... Examples are a very good way to communicate ideas!
OBTW, you are aware, I hope, that the BUSUID, DEVUID and all that refer to the points under /proc/bus/usb and not to /media/
The rules for UDEV are under /etc/udev/ The rules for HAL are under /etc/hal
(All of which you could have found from the MAN pages) I have seen these, but not been able to grok. The model behind what is going on, which gives the reader the ability to understand the
As I was saying, Linux is perfectly logical. NO, it is NOT, it is extremely complex understand for a beginning/intermediate and I would dare say even advanced users. It comes with commands that have overwhelming numbers of parameters, multiple models for doing similar tasks that are inconsistent at best, gives keyhole views of the internals unless one wants to read code, with documentation that is difficult to comprehend and often outdated, and GUIs that are not well thought out to act as guides/teachers. The good
And, as I said, the device notifier is a KDE applet that lets you deal with the mounted devices, it does not do the mount. All it does is let you run the file manager, or gwenview or something. You may be technically correct, but to someone who did not develop that tool, that is NOT obvious. What a user see's is that it notifies you when you insert a USB device. It pops up dialog, and tells you about the device. Then the user can click on the device, within the notifier, and IT GETS MOUNTED. To an uninformed user, that sure as heck appears as if
Again, I don't fully follow. I tried exporting /proc/bus/usb and the nfsserver and complained about it saying it is not supported. Now you mention yet a new interesting point in the file system - /proc/bus/usb! I have tried to export /media/MyPassport, /dev/sdc1, done a separate mount to /mnt/usbdrive and exported it, and now /proc/bus/usb. NONE worked! In exports I have tried all four variants, such as /proc/bus/usb 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw,root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check) and I get something similar to this as a result - rcnfsserver restart Shutting down kernel based NFS server: nfsd done Starting kernel based NFS server: idmapdexportfs: Warning: /proc/bus/usb does not support NFS export. mountd statd nfsd sm-notify parameters and setting in the context of and association with that model, is NOT well explained in the man pages. I also believe that external documentation such as MAN pages is not a good idea. If commands, configuration, and GUI's are not intuitive and easy to comprehend, then they have been badly designed. Presentation should be self documenting, I wish more programmers would understand that and not duck their responsibilities by saying "RTFM". Man pages and external documentation is difficult to maintain, and rarely kept up to date. This is a failed model and we need to approach documentation in a whole new way... thing is Linux does not block the user from gaining access to internal information, it just overwhelms the user. That is NOT a logical way to design an OS for all levels of users. Sadly no one has done so yet and I keep hoping Linux, because it is open sourced and has a lot of good people working on it, will get out of this quagmire soon... the device notifier IS mounting the device or causing the device to be mounted. Split hairs all you want, if the device notifier is presenting a model that is wrong, don't blame the user for not understanding.
As for the idea of giving a user coming in from across the network the ability to copy/move ....
We suggested ways to do that originally and you rejected them. We - I recall I did - suggested that you use 'rsync'. Rsync has the advantage that it can keep both USB sticks - or any other object/target pair, in sync, only updating what has been changed.
Anton, in the beginning, you said Do not use Samba, use NFS instead. OK I tried NFS, and I have so far failed to get it to work properly. Now you tell me to go use yet another tool - rsync. And you don't think this is complicated? Robust? Looks like it is yet another client/server system... Ok, I will take a look at rsync, but wow, for what should have been an easy task, this one has turned out to be a nightmare! And yeah I know you are going to say "That is because you are trying to butt heads against Linux and not do things the Linux way" To which you can guess what my reply is... IF I can copy files from a Linux system, via a Samba share to a USB drive mounted on a Windoz system, or from a Windoz system to a shared USB drive mounted on some other Windoz system, why in the world can I NOT do this from a Linux system to a Linux system via the Linux tools for NSF, which as you so often have said, "is what makes Linux easy".... (nor can I copy files from a Windoz system, via either Samba or NFS to a USB drive mounted on a Linux system) To me this indicates that some security constraint is buggered somewhere or there is a serious design flaw. I would like to believe the former and get help in finding out what I have done wrong, the latter is far more worrisome.
It can also be automated. That way whenever you wife makes a change it triggers the rsync to update your copy. And vice versa.
Mind you, most of us would find it simpler to have one and only one shared copy (on a server) and copy that the (local to you each) USB devices when needed. All of which ensures you have one reference copy and avoid all the problems you have encountered.
The consultants among us know that productivity and overcoming problems is more often effected by changes in process. Difficulties such as yours are usually a Big Red Flag that says "you're doing it wrong". We ask "what are you trying to achieve" rather than "what are you trying to do".
Perhaps that's part of your problem. Or perhaps you are not listening, computers are meant to be flexible tools to help users get their jobs done in as easy of a fashion as
What a weird question!!! Achieve? v.s Do? Those words are synonyms! What am I trying to achieve? I am trying to achieve a direct copy or move of a file from one Linux computer to a USB drive mounted on another Linux computer! The WHY is IRRELEVANT! i.e - cp myFile /mnt/usbdrive/someDirectoryOnTheUSBDriveMountedOnSomeOtherMachineOnMyLAN or if I use the KDE/Hal supplied automated mount point - cp myFile /media/MyPassport/someDirectoryOnTheUSBDriveMountedOnSomeOtherMachineOnMyLAN Is that clear enough? possible. Not straight-jackets such as what Microcrap wants to impose on its users. And Anton, you telling me that I have to do things in some two staged Linux way, is exactly the same sort of message Microcrap tells it's users - "Do it my way or take the highway" approach... And I don't believe you for one second, Linux has been very flexible for the most part and there is a lot of reasons I like it better... But this apparently is NOT one of those reasons and someone somewhere is either designing things wrong or making mistakes in implementing some of these tools, or presenting me with tools and a model that has allowed and made it too easy for me to make a serious mistake, without any easy/useful means of diagnosing the problem and correcting it....
OBTW: Marc, it is considered impolite to reply on the forum to mail that you have been sent privately, off forum.
This I did not know, but will turn this around by saying that you did not ask me to communicate in private up front. I thought I was being nice and correcting a mistake you were making, when you replied to me directly, by responding via the openSuSE forum. I prefer that communications be done publicly, on this forum, so that others may follow in my footsteps, should they encounter the same issue. Unless you are going to share with me some configuration details, or other such information that needs to be kept private for security reasons, please reply via the forum. Otherwise please give me a heads up first, and I will honor your privacy and respond as appropriate. Marc.. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org