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[perkiset]

Cripes! Two requests for help in a single day.. whadda loser!

Anyway: I have two machines. The details of them are not really important except that they are Linux boxes on a private network.

Box A is a graphics/WMV/Flash box that has a directory structure like this:
/graphics
   /clientA
   /clientB
   /clientC

Box B is an HTML renderer where my clients "back office" applications reside. Part of the back office allows them to Add/Update/Delete graphics... but the graphics have always been on the same box. Now, I want to put graphics on a different box but have symbolic link directories pointing to persistent "network shares" on another box, so the directory structure looks like this:
/www
   /clients
      /A
         /graphics <<< This should be the /graphics/clientA dir on Box A
      /B
         /graphics <<< This should be the /graphics/clientB dir on Box A
      /C
         /graphics <<< This should be the /graphics/clientC dir on Box A

... so that moving in and out of the directories on Box B feels just like it always did, except that as soon as you get into the graphics dir you're actually looking at Box A.

I don't care if it's SAMBA or whatever, but it's got to be stable and persistentable. And writeable as well: a client using my Image Uploader will be coming in on Box B, and the storage of the graphics will need to LOOK like it's on Box B, but it is REALLY at Box A. (This is less complicated than it sounds - so long as I can write to the /www/clients/A/graphics dir and it goes to Box A) I can figure it out if SAMBA is the only way, but I am hoping someone has a bit more experience with such a thing and can counsel me.

Hope this is clear enough... I tried to do a quick Visio of this and it just looked like hell 

Any help appreciated,
/perk

[ratthing]

You could easily set this up with NFS.  Caveat: IMO, NFS under Linux blows, but other people make it work, so YMMV.  On Solaris, HP-UX or (maybe) AIX, NFS would be a no-brainer.  You could do it via static mounts (mounting at boot time) or via automounter (only mounted when some app needs the directory).

I worked at a place pre-100TX with 2K engineers all running their *nix workstation home dirs off of dinky NFS servers.

I would stay away from using SAMBA because SMB is inefficient as hell over the network; I don't think the i/o performance-wise would be good either but can't say for sure.  It's also pain in the a$$ to configure.

Another option would be AFS, but you'll have a learning curve there.

=RT=

[thedarkness]

NFS was the first thing that sprang into my mind too. Watch out for security issues, it's doable but as ratthing mentioned it's a bit of a pain to work with (my experience is very limited BTW and dated).

Cheers,
td

[ratthing]

If top-flight security is required, AFS would be the choice, IMO (or possibly kerberized NFS?  NFS v4 doesn't work on Linux).  sshfs/fuse is another possibility, but I've only played with this on Mac OS and Linux (e.g. farting around at home), and it's not ready for a production environment on the Mac.

If you're on a private corporate network with decent security in place NFS shouldn't add too much risk if you are careful.

=RT=

[perkiset]

This is on a private, utterly inaccesible net except to my personal VPN and the machines involved. The issues are Fast, Persistent, Transparent and Reliable.