34.2 Access Methods
The following methods and protocols are well-suited to le transfer and sharing.
FTP
Use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) if you need to exchange les very often and with
different users. Set up an FTP server on one system and access it with clients. There
are many graphical client applications available for FTP on Windows*, MacOS,
and Linux. Depending on how your FTP server is used, enable read and write per-
missions. See Section 34.5.4, “Copying Files with FTP” (page 555) for more details
on FTP.
NFS
NFS (Network File System) is a client/server system. A server exports one or more
directories that can be imported by a client. For more information, see Chapter 26,
Sharing File Systems with NFS (page 417).
Use NFS if you share les very often and for different users. Generally, this protocol
is more common in the Linux world than in the Windows world. An NFS export
integrates well into your Linux system and you can browse the imported directory
structure like any other folder on your local machine. Depending on your congu-
ration, enable either read or write permissions or both on the server. In general, for
a home user it makes sense to allow read and write access.
rsync
Use rsync to transfer regularly large volumes of data that does not change consid-
erably. It is available on Linux and Windows. A typical use case for rsync is man-
aging data backups. Refer to the manual page of the rsync command and Sec-
tion 34.5.2, “Transferring Files with rsync” (page 551) for more information.
Unison
Unison is an alternative to rsync. It is used to regularly synchronize les between
different computers but has the advantage to behave bidirectionally. Refer to the
manual page of the Unison command and Section 34.5.3, “Transferring Files with
Unison” (page 552) for more information. Unison is available on Linux and Win-
dows.
Copying and Sharing Files 545
