Unix Distributed File System Support

Dear E-Smith Developers,

I am really happy to have tried out and install e-smith at
home. It is a really amazingly customized distribution that is the right direction for small ad medium sized shops. I used to build the same type of Box for a small company circa 1996 using 48s!

Unfortunately the business strategy has a major flaw:
It benefits Windows and Macintosh platforms more than its native Unix roots when it comes to file sharing. It makes the replacement of e-smith servers easy whenever a better version of the native Windows and Mac server become stable or cheap enough.
There needs to be a more compelling use for this server than the
traditional market. It has to be an enabler of better technologies.

I would like to see the usability of the e-smith server for distributed file sharing on Unix boxes improve.
I understand that the traditional NFS server is not secure enough... but because the e-smith server's kernel is not easily replaced (or recompiled) there is an oportunity for the installation and promoting of one of these two distributed filesystems:

Open Andrew File System http://www.openafs.org/

CODA http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/

I believe that AFS has a very secure mechanism for file sharing.
and CODA represents a possibility of managed failovers.

Please consider building some mechanism for Unix filesystem
distribution using any of the above filesystems
as it will make this server unique and a stable of
every home, lab and small business...
it can make the adoption of Linux on the desktop a definite possibility if the backend support is imporved.

Thanks again for a very interesting distribution.

Good Luck!

Sergio

PS: I am aware of smbfs in most distributions... but it is still not very well integrated with the Unix admin tools. It may have improved but of as Mandrake 7.2 things didn't look very promising