Media Server

Mr Green · 2007-10-26 14:20:36

Can I connect to my desktop from my laptop [wireless] to access my music?

Going to set up wireless network over weekend but I still want my desktop connected [ethernet!]

Will desktop have to be visible to web [bad idea!] or can I access via ssh ?

/me looks at slimserver

Forgive dumb questions just had not much luck with wireless :-)

Endperform · 2007-10-26 16:11:46

You should be fine with a wireless / wired setup. It's how I have my network set up. I use Samba to get to things on my desktop from my laptop, and the laptop is wireless. I also have an SSH server on the desktop, too, in case I need to log in and do things. You don't need to open it up to the outside world. Here's my setup:

     /--------- desktop (wired)
     |
[router]
     |
     \---------- laptop (wireless)

As I said, I have Samba running on the desktop, and can access my music, home dir, and anything else I need to.

elasticdog · 2007-10-26 16:14:06

Yes you should be able to connect to your desktop from your laptop. When everything is hooked up through a wireless router/AP, all of your machines will be on the same subnet, so you can ssh or whatever to one or the other via the internal IP address (usually 192.168.x.x). The wireless portion of the AP just acts as a bridge between wireless (802.11) and Ethernet (802.3), so it should be transparent.

You do not have to make the desktop (or any other system) available to the outside world. The router uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to translate your internal IP addresses into one externally available IP address (the one your ISP assigns you) and won't know what to do with incoming traffic unless you specifically tell it what to do. If you WANT to allow some sort of access to the outside world, you can use port-forwarding on your router to pass through specific ports. For instance, I have mine set up to forward port 22 to my Arch box which is always on, so I can SSH to my home machine from anywhere.

Firewall rules and everything else all apply the same as any other internal network. Hopefully that clears some things up, if you have other specific networking questions, just let me know :-)

nogoma · 2007-10-26 16:17:53

I'll just chime in and recommend using FUSE+sshfs for listening to music on your laptop. Just mount your media from your desktop to your laptop, and presto! you have access to your media w/o having to copy it over to your laptop. I'm fairly sure there are some threads on sshfs on the forums to get you started if interested.

Mr Green · 2007-10-26 18:18:54

Thanks guys for your replies ......Think for the moment I would like to allow Laptop to access Desktop locally first.... Have no need to access machine remotely [atm!]

So if I set up slimsever on port 8080 [or whatever!] then can Laptop access it from wireless?

elasticdog · 2007-10-26 22:38:52

Mr Green wrote:

So if I set up slimsever on port 8080 [or whatever!] then can Laptop access it from wireless?

Absolutely!

Mr Green · 2007-10-28 08:47:27

ok wireless is working now .... undecided about how to access [aka no idea how!] Desktop via vnc Samba ???

Any guides to setting up this stuff would be a great help

TIA

.:B:. · 2007-10-28 11:44:52

nogoma wrote:

I'll just chime in and recommend using FUSE+sshfs for listening to music on your laptop. Just mount your media from your desktop to your laptop, and presto! you have access to your media w/o having to copy it over to your laptop. I'm fairly sure there are some threads on sshfs on the forums to get you started if interested.

My impression is NFS is a tad lighter than SSHfs (better throughput e.a.). Then again, if your WLAN is not reliably encrypted (WPA or WPA2), SSHfs is the better solution.

Last edited by B (2007-10-28 11:49:32)

nogoma · 2007-10-29 14:47:55

B wrote:

My impression is NFS is a tad lighter than SSHfs (better throughput e.a.). Then again, if your WLAN is not reliably encrypted (WPA or WPA2), SSHfs is the better solution.

Hmm... that's interesting; I've had a much more friendly experience w/ sshfs myself (I in fact started a thread on the forums about using sshfs for a NAS instead of nfs, but didn't get any replies...). Not to hijack this thread, but I'm curious if you had more details. I've never run nfs and sshfs side by side (i.e. the same shares on the same network) to really make a comparison, but when I've used nfs (mainly at work, large network, lots of access on the system), it's been pretty painful when compared to the ease of setup and good access speeds I see on my home network (small network, only two or three users simultaneously accessing data). I tried googling around for a technical comparison (my knowledge of the two can be summed up as I've read nfs is a pretty chatty protocol, whereas w/ sshfs you obviously have the encryption overhead). So, if you had any references or even real world experiences of your own comparing the two methods, I'd be interested in hearing about it. (again, sorry to hijack the thread, you can post replies in my other thread at http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=38162 if you'd rather)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-10-26 14:20:36

Media Server

#2 2007-10-26 16:11:46

Re: Media Server

#3 2007-10-26 16:14:06

Re: Media Server

#4 2007-10-26 16:17:53

Re: Media Server

#5 2007-10-26 18:18:54

Re: Media Server

#6 2007-10-26 22:38:52

Re: Media Server

#7 2007-10-28 08:47:27

Re: Media Server

#8 2007-10-28 11:44:52

Re: Media Server

#9 2007-10-29 14:47:55

Re: Media Server

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