ubuntu xp vmware cluster f...er...filesharing

[Eric S. Johansson]

James Strandboge wrote:

> 
> The problem you are having is that the concept of file permissions in
> Unix and Windows NT/XP is dramatically different.  Samba does a good job
> of translating these permissions so that a Windows machine can store
> files on a samba server and have the permissions be what the Windows
> user expects.  Remember the simple case, Windows has 'read-only',
> 'archive', 'system' and 'hidden' bits for one user.  Unix has 'read',
> 'write', and 'execute' for owner, group and other (not accounting for
> NT/XP acls or Unix acls and SUID, SGID and sticky bits).

Oh I understand the concept, I just expected better in a bunch of 
different ways.  I guess when it comes to computers, I have fairly low 
expectations and I'm still frequently disappointed.

> 
> However, if I understand correctly, you are going the other way and want
> to store Unix files and its permissions on a Windows computer.

That's correct.  I need to go this way because of backup requirements.

>  Windows
> file sharing has no ability to do this translating because it assumes an
> all Windows environment.  This might be ok for storing data files for a
> particular user, but not for storing system files or files with
> specialized permissions.

Unfortunately, I came to that conclusion quite a while ago but hoped 
somebody had some knowledge that I didn't.  I do appreciate the effort 
you took in replying to my query.

>  One option might be to have an NFS server
> running on Windows XP (haven't done this personally, but presumably it
> would try to preserve the file permissions somehow).  Another is to run
> cron jobs on your Unix/Linux systems that store archive files (eg
> tarballs) on your Windows server.  Possibly another is to adjust
> VMware's file sharing settings (assuming you can adjust its masks and
> force a particular user or group).

in order:

haven't found a good NFS server yet that's reliable (on XP that is). 
The same goes for a variety of other network file servers.  All the 
really interesting distributed ones seem to have suffered significant 
bit rot (i.e. coda and intermezzo which died in 2004).

Cron job with tarballs?  Well, been there, lost data that way. 
Remember, XP comes up first and goes down last.  Virtual machines are 
either suspended or terminated.

The VM workstation doesn't give you the ability to change pug settings 
(Permissions, User, Group).  it's that old mismatch between UNIX versus 
NTFS permissions biting me in the butt again.

Jamie, I really appreciate your feedback.  It has helped in more than 
one way.  As I suspected when I started this quest, multiplatform 
distributed or synchronized filesystems just aren't up to snuff yet.

There is one possible solution you haven't mentioned yet which is to try 
and use a remote Linux machine as my common file system between all of 
the virtual machines.  And I will admit I do like the idea but I still 
need to access all the files from Windows because, I frequently work off 
network to eliminate distractions such as e-mail and the Web, not to 
mention instant messenger.

I think the easiest solution for me is going to be externalizing the pug 
settings into the Python setup.py environment and ignore the host 
filesystem associated pug.

Thanks again

---eric