These days, when people think of a file server, they assume that it must support Windows CIFS (a.k.a. SMB or Samba). A few grizzled sysadmins know that NFS would be much, much simpler to set up and almost nobody would consider using FTP. Well, that is too bad, since for many situations, anonymous FTP is best and it works purrfectly on my little OpenBSD netbook. FTP is a very simple protocol, it only talks when it has to and is completely quiet otherwise. It has none of the chattyness and incessant 'CACA' packets of CIFS. It is extremely easy to set up and has native support in all operating systems. Even Windows can do anonymous FTP transparently and can map a FTP server to a drive letter, thus enabling any program to connect to the server directly. Some will speak up and say that FTP is insecure. Well, yes, but so is NFS and CIFS. The difference is that FTP doesn't even pretend to be secure. The joke is that nowadays, since script kiddies are unfamiliar wit
Autonomous planes, trains and cranes...