[LUNI] newbie question on file sharing

[Ramin K]

<snipping the overly complex network>

	Thinking about your situation makes my head hurt so rather than talk 
about what you have I'll talk about what I would do.

1. Setup some Linux server on decent hardware.
	This is going to be the core of things so make sure it has RAID and a 
decent amount of RAM.

2. Move email to the Linux server
	Once it's there use IMAP to present it to the network. Now you can 
access via Thunderbird, pine, elm, mutt, whatever from any machine on 
the network.

3. Now install Samba on the Linux server
	Once it's installed you can now share the Lexmark printer with any 
machine on the network.

	Make it an domain contoller so it can force Windows users of local 
machines to have mandatory profiles so that My Docs is on the Linux 
server. Additionally each Windows machine will hae the docs local as 
well. Same goes for Linux users as well.

4. Install NFS on your Linux server
	NFSv3 will give you more options that NFSv2, but NFSv2 will be more 
likely to work with the random *nix boxes you have. Set aside a dir on 
the Linux server and have the *nix boxes mount it up. This can be a dir 
inside what you're allow Samba to share or not. Keep in mind that 
UID/GID issues suck and it might be easier and simpler to install a 
samba client on all the *nix boxes. Then you'd have full access to the 
Samba share and wouldn't run into UID/GID problems AND there would be no 
need to have docs locally as you could edit the version on the share 
directly.
	If anyone mentions NFS on Windows poke them in the eye. It sucks and is 
nearly impossible to use.

5. Backup are not file shares
	I'd have each machine push files to be backed up to the Linux server. 
This handled separately from all file sharing. The file share is also 
backed up and since all important files live on the share there 
shouldn't be too many things that need to be received the various client 
machines.

6. Palm sync works on Linux, but I've never used it. Can't say if it 
sucks or not.

7. I think you can do lpr stuff on the Linux server so even if you can't 
get Samba/cups going on the *nix boxes you can still print. It's been 
years since I touched lpr.

That's pretty much it. The above would solve about 80% of your issues 
right off the bat at least from what you've told us. Some of it's not 
very simple to setup, but would be load easier tha switching from 
computer to computer like you are now.

Ramin