[Johnny_B]

I am looking for a way so I can work on the fly (read not like ftp) on documents back home, from a laptop or the sucky Window$ machines we have at school. I've know how samba works, and I would have no problem configuring it. The only question, is it safe ?

And over to a more question for the future, how abbout ssl and samba ??

[larkost]

Yes, SMB (the protocol that SaMBa uses) will work over the net at large. But it specifically has no encryption. Passwords can be encrypted (nor required by default), but the actual data is not encrypted, and the stream is subject to hijacking (not that this is common at all).

You could tunnel things through ssh, but that is going to be non-trivial to setup, and virtually impossible in a lab situation. About the same deal for a VPN.

Then there is scp and sftp, but again your problem will be in using those clients at some random computer.

About the best thing to do is to get a USB-thumb drive and take important things with you, or deal with the lack of security.

PS... the same comments go with AFP and NFS... I am not sure about AFS (Andrew File System).

[si_lance]

You're gonna think this is crazy, but I do exactly what you need with the use of CVS.

I work from home one or two times a week so I have a cvs repository on a Windows XP workstation (TortoiseCVS is very convenient), and then with a Win2k notebook I plug into the same network at work, and did a cvs checkout by mapping the C (using the admin C$ share) as G on my laptop (they both have the same user/pass). The repository is in Crepository on the workstation and Grepository on my laptop. This is for Java source code so before I work from home I just do a checkin/commit on the workstation and update on the notebook. I do the reverse when I get to work after working from home. It's a great system for me. I then, unfortunately, commit the finished files to a Clearcase server (bleh).

Hope this helps.

By the way, I do this with documentation files as well...

Sorry this is a little offtopic, but Samba accross the net not piped through ssh is VERY unsafe.