Take the 2-minute tour ×

I will be running a server which will work with data on a local disk. I would also like to share the volume over the LAN with Samba or NFS to servers which will also be writing to data on the disc.

Should my main server act as both a Samba/NFS server and client (i.e. everything interacting with the disc through samba)? Or is it safe to mount and work with the mounted drive normally on the main server, while at the same time other servers are writing to data through Samba/NFS?

Also any opinions on choice of network file server are welcomed. Thanks!

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

If you could only access shared folders via their shares, then I don't think any networking OS would have got very far!

It's perfectly safe to access a file on a local volume, AND share it by Samba, and NFS, and if you want, FTP, HTTP, SCP, or Upside-Down-Ternet.

I notice you tagged the post locked-file. Locking will be handled by the underlying file system.

share|improve this answer
Thanks a lot! I new my question might be stupid, but hopefully someone else will find it helpful too. –  jberryman Oct 8 '09 at 2:28
No such thing as a stupid question. Well ok, there are, but yours is farrr from the stupidest question I've ever seen. Cos you're right, someone else might find it useful in the future, and that's what ServerFault is all about! –  Mark Henderson Oct 8 '09 at 2:29

As long as it's NFSv3 or greater I think you should be able to safely work with the data locally and remotely, NFSv2 doesn't properly do filesystem locking.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


