Topic: Drive Sharing over SME server

[plsmith86]

Hi, I was origonally trying to set up a network drive at my work place, so I can acess files, on my home server. after looking around online, I found out that windows does not support the ports that were needed for the port to be forworded through my linksys firewall. A friend at work told me about sme server and all the cool things it does, so I looked into it, put together a bunch of old computer parts... and he was right it is absolutly amazing, however... I still can not acess files on my server, remotly. I can acess my FTP through my dyndns.org domane. What my question is, is can I set up a folder on one of my I-Bays (that I can acess from outside the network via ftp) to acess my shared local drives, on my windows file server (windows xp pro sp2) ... If so, how can I do this, any ideas?

[Jáder]

I think best approuch should be create a VPN to your SME server.
After that you're in internal network, so can map ANY share of local network using windows tools.

If you have any doubts please read the fine manual (RTFM), seach the forums, search the wiki, and if not solved ask here again. I'm telling this because before to use VPN you must enable it on server and to your user.

Good luck

Jáder

[mercyh]

The following may do what you want. This will not allow you to map a drive and work on files directly but it would allow you to download the file to your work machine and then upload it back to the server after your changes were saved. (I don't think you will generally be happy with the performance if you try to map a drive over VPN and then open the files directly on that share across a residential internet connection anyway). VPN has the advantage as jader says of opening all shared drives on the local network.

http://wiki.contribs.org/Webshare

[mercyh]

I would actually use RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and eliminate the server completely if both of these are Windows XP machines.

(No, I am not giving my location to you Linux gurus so you can come beat me. )

[imcintyre]

I used this contrib.

Code: [Select]

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=33043.0 on my home sme server.

Two reasons
1) Security appears better with it. I am not an expert so I have to take someone's word for it.
2) It allows me to vpn from behind my sme server into work and also from behind work firewall/router (not sme) into home. I am not sure of the reasons, but if you enable vpn access through the the server-manager you will be able to access your network from outside, but you won't be able to vpn into another network from behind the sme server.

Also, don't forget to renumber one of your networks, both networks cannot be of the name 192.168.xxx.yyy, where xxx is the same number.

[plsmith86]

Hey Guys, Thanks for the helpful hints, I have the server almost 100% configured for what my business needs are as well as  my home needs... But I still can not get VPN to work, I have fallowed all the instructions and all the helpful hints you guys have given me, but I still can not get the damn thing to work. It connects to the VPN client, and locks up at verifying user / password. I dont know what I have configured wrong, but I can not log onto the server from inside the network with internal work stations as well, the clients are on XP and Vista. Before I took down my windows server all the roaming profiles and users and passwords were working great, and the only thing more I wanted was a stable program to run my webpage, email server and other misc. things (and trust me sme works wonderful for that...) . . . now I have a bigger mess than when I started. This is racking my brains out Im sure I must have done something wrong... any one run into this issue before, or is it just me?

[imcintyre]

I'm going to ask a bunch of stupid/basic questions to try to clarify what the problem is. I'm pretty much limited to the basic so if you have a real problem others will have to help.

RE the VPN issue
Does your business or home network look like this?

Modem
  |
SME with two network cards, in gateway/server mode, providing DHCP
  |
Switches/WAP's
  |
All other clients

The above is what I have at home and the VPN option in the Server-Manager works perfectly. If not tell us what it looks like, and the network you are trying to vpn to/from.

I'd like a little bit more clarity around the

I can not log onto the server from inside the network with internal work stations as well,...

Is this as just a basic user to see some network shares or as admin/root. Assuming that it is the basic user access problem, I'm hoping that you have created the user by way of the Server-Manager panel and the manual Then certainly from any Window's machine you should be able to go \\myserverip and get a user name and password window pop-up.

Please give more details so we can help.