Other NFS NTFS file server

HI,

I am looking to create a FreeBSD file server. There would be a second physical disk setup (NTFS) that would mount via NFS. There would be no operating system information on the disk, just a shared disk for the office to store files on, from office documents, cad files, pictures, and similar.

Are there any issues I should expect or try to deal with in doing so? What I don't want is to end up with corrupt files down the line.
 
Do you want to mount the disk via NFS from a remote system or do you want to mount it locally and share it with NFS?

In the first case, you wouldn't care about the on-disk filesystem.

In the second case, why on earth would you use NTFS? Use ZFS :eek:
 
Neither NFS or Samba would require the need to use NTFS on the host. So don't. The host can serve those to Windows hosts just fine from UFS or ZFS.
 
I use to do that and the autocad files would end up corrupted. So I was going to try and avoid that.
 
If you use a network filesystem like NFS or SMB/CIFS, that's all the client knows. It doesn't matter what the machine providing this network fs uses on the physical disk.

But using NTFS on anything other than an original Windows system is begging for trouble.

So you had some problem with Autocad, well, some applications don't like network filesystems at all (e.g. because of trouble with locking). I can't tell you anything about that, never used Autocad. But you thought the solution would be to use NTFS on disk -- I can assure you, it isn't, and I recommend to read about the XY-Problem. Avoiding this pattern improves the chances to get some good advice quickly :)
 
I don't know Autocad nor have I experience using SMB/CIFS, but if Autocad behaves like e.g. LibreOffice, which wants to lock files on it's own, then mounting the share with something similar to NFS's nolockd might help. It should be in the documentation...


A quick google search confirms that Zirias had the right instict:
from https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...use-drawing-file-corruption-or-data-loss.html
Saving to a network server in a mixed operating system environment
If you save to a network server in a mixed operating system environment (for example, Novell® or UNIX servers), you might encounter problems with file locking that can lead to data loss or corruption.

Edit: Just seen that you were using NFS. I had to google that up and was surprised that it has landed native in Windows. Then you should be able to use the nolockd (maybe called slightly different) mount option from the Windows NFS client.
 
Ha! :) Well, call it instinct, but it's of course experience as well: Whenever something goes strangely wrong on a network filesystem, there's a >50% chance file locking is involved and doesn't work like the application expects :)

In this particular case, you can try two things:
  • Do as k.jacker suggested, resulting in local-only locking. As long as you don't have multiple machines trying to access the same files, this might solve the problem.
  • Use SMB/CIFS instead (iow net/samba48). I assume this is a windows application, so it might behave better when using the network filesystem that was always part of windows.
(edit: There's nothing wrong with sharing the same stuff with both SMB/CIFS and NFS -- that's exactly what I do at home, FreeBSD and Linux machines use the NFS shares, Windows machines the SMB/CIFS shares)
 
HI,

I am looking to create a FreeBSD file server. There would be a second physical disk setup (NTFS) that would mount via NFS. There would be no operating system information on the disk, just a shared disk for the office to store files on, from office documents, cad files, pictures, and similar.

Are there any issues I should expect or try to deal with in doing so? What I don't want is to end up with corrupt files down the line.

sshfs is your friend first first of all !

pkg install samba
set into the conf to write allow r/w.
 
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