connecting to a server

[Colin Law]

On 12 January 2011 17:26, Bill Stanley <bstanle at wowway.com> wrote:
> On 01/12/2011 12:05 PM, Colin Law wrote:
>>
>> On 12 January 2011 16:50, Bill Stanley<bstanle at wowway.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> This is getting tedious...
>>>
>>> Is there any way to get a BIG (4.5 GB) file from my server to the laptop.
>>>  I
>>> am having problems on the laptop  with connecting to the server where the
>>> BIG file is located.  I have other computers on the network that can
>>> access
>>> the file but not the lapto
>>>
>>> I have tried to connect to the server using places/connect.  I choose
>>> Windows share and the servers name.  I get back an error message stating
>>>
>>> Cannot display location "smb//???"  (note: The servers name is not ???)
>>>
>>> The other computers on the network accessing this server so the problem
>>> is
>>> in the laptop.  I ran apt-get install smbfs to try to connect the other
>>> was
>>> and use the laptop as a server and thus having the server SEND the file.
>>>  Still no luck.   The laptop has a new install of 10.10 and smbfs is the
>>> only change I have made from a fresh install.
>>>
>>>
>>> PS is there any other way to get the big file to the laptop.  I tried a
>>> DVD
>>> but this file is to big for even a DVD.  (The largest file you can put on
>>> a
>>> DVD is 2 GB.  I tried and failed.)  Is there any way to split up the
>>> file,
>>> write the pieces of the file to disk, read the disks on the laptop and
>>> then
>>> reconstruct the big file from its pieces.   This would be very laborious
>>> and
>>> the network route is far better.
>>
>> Is the file already compressed?
>>
>> What OS is the server running?  If linux then I don't know whether
>> rsync would cope with it.
>
> The file is on a Ubuntu linux computer.  The file is not compressed but I
> tried to compress it using the compress option I get when I right click on
> the file.  Tar.gz was the option but nothing happened.

You might have to give it quite a long time to compress it, I would
not necessarily assume nothing is happening.  I don't know but it
could easily take minutes or tens of minutes I should think.  After
all you are talking about 3000 floppy disks worth :)

As it is on linux I would give rsync or scp a go (after checking you
can ssh in one direction or the other).

Colin