Remote file access and transfer for Xserve? Help!

On Feb 9, 2008, at 12:54 PM, Scott Wyant wrote:

> Just got a surprise request from a client. I've installed an Xserve
> at his place of business, and configured it properly, I believe. It's
> behind a Netgear Firewall/VPN box, AND an Airport Extreme (802.11n).
> Netgear is distributing IPs to the whole network, which I'll change at
> a later date... BUT...
>
> he's leaving for Australia on Mon., and walked in yesterday with a new
> MacBook. Wants to be able to connect to the server and grab files to
> work on while he's away.

Why not just establish a VPN connection and use regular file sharing?

On Feb 9, 2008, at 3:54 PM, Scott Wyant wrote:

> Just got a surprise request from a client. I've installed an Xserve
> at his place of business, and configured it properly, I believe. It's
> behind a Netgear Firewall/VPN box, AND an Airport Extreme (802.11n).
> Netgear is distributing IPs to the whole network, which I'll change at
> a later date... BUT...
>
> he's leaving for Australia on Mon., and walked in yesterday with a new
> MacBook. Wants to be able to connect to the server and grab files to
> work on while he's away.

If the Netgear is a VPN server, then the solution is he connects to
the VPN then uses AppleShare to connect to the Xserve. If "Netgear is
distributing IPs to the whole network" that means the Airport Extreme
Base Station is surely configured as an access point and won't
interfere with the connection as it would if it were functioning as a
NAT/DHCP server.

But there's probably some missing piece of information or otherwise
you wouldn't be listing complex connection methods instead of this
straightforward one.

At 12:54 PM -0800 2/9/08, Scott Wyant wrote:
>Just got a surprise request from a client. I've installed an Xserve
>at his place of business, and configured it properly, I believe. It's
>behind a Netgear Firewall/VPN box, AND an Airport Extreme (802.11n).
>Netgear is distributing IPs to the whole network, which I'll change at
>a later date... BUT...
>
>he's leaving for Australia on Mon., and walked in yesterday with a new
>MacBook. Wants to be able to connect to the server and grab files to
>work on while he's away.

Does he actually need GUI *control*, or just file transfer access
with a GUI client?

Given the time constraints, and if the latter is sufficient, I'd do
the following:

User's account on the Xserve is Remote Login (SSH) enabled.
VPN into the Netgear.
User uses SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) client to do file transfers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_file_transfer_protocol

SFTP clients include:
http://www.interarchy.com/
http://www.fetchsoftworks.com/
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/
http://captainftp.xdsnet.de/
http://cyberduck.ch/
http://www.panic.com/transmit/

I personally wouldn't use AFP file sharing, because in my experience AFP on a high-latency connection can seriously beachball the Finder.

--
Andrew Laurence atlaurenes.nacs.uci.edu
Network & Academic Computing Svcs. http://www.nacs.uci.edu/~atlauren/
UC Irvine

In another message, Andrew Laurence wrote:

I personally wouldn't use AFP file sharing, because in my experience AFP on a high-latency connection can seriously beachball the Finder.

Your comment confirms something I've experienced (and wondered about) many times. My question [possibly needing to have it's own thread] is: why is this? And why hasn't something been done to remedy the situation?

The average Mac user is going to have no clue about the difference between AFP, FTP, Samba, etc.; but they're going to be very disturbed by the performance of AFP connections. I know because I deal with questions about this in my consulting business all the time! It seems that there should be some incentive for Apple to fix this, or go in another direction altogether...

It feel like TidBITS has had threads on this topic before, but I'm just really curious as to why the problem still exists, and why it appears Apple doesn't seem to care about fixing it!?!

There are so many examples of how much slower the Finder is to copy, move and share files in comparison to other platforms. Why isn't Apple doing something to remedy this? I guess I'm largely motivated to post this having now upgraded several machines to Leopard, only to find that things are just the same in the new OS! How can the engineers at Apple look at themselves in the mirror in the morning??

On 2/9/08 2:54 PM, "Scott Wyant" <swyantgmail.com> wrote:

> Any ideas? Apple Remote Desktop doesn't really do this properly,
> WebEx doesn't offer remote file access/transfer for Macs "at this
> time," Timbuktu requires Skype (!) to pull this off, which I'll do if
> I have to, I guess. LogMeIn "doesn't support Mac file transfer at
> this time," (and crashes the Xserve when I try) and the Xserver
> software doesn't have a "BackToMyMac" tab. I wrote to Apple, and they
> promised me a 48 hr. response, which doesn't help.
>
> I want a GUI for this guy, rather than an FTP interface, because he's
> got a complicated, ad hoc file structure that he knows visually.
> Short of copying all the files from the server to the laptop before he
> leaves, is there another way?

Why *not* FTP? Plenty of good GUI FTP clients exist. I don't see why FTP
would make a complicated file structure any more complicated.

Transmit is great and has a feature similar to Timbuktu where it shows your
local computer's files on one side and the server's on the other. Transfer
is as simple as drag and drop.

FTP is also built-in and probably the fastest protocol he could use. For
security I'd recommend VPN too or SFTP.

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

jiclark wrote:
> In another message, Andrew Laurence wrote:
>
> I personally wouldn't use AFP file sharing, because in my experience
> AFP on a high-latency connection can seriously beachball the Finder.
>
>
>
> Your comment confirms something I've experienced (and wondered about)
> many times. My question [possibly needing to have it's own thread]
> is: why is this? And why hasn't something been done to remedy the
> situation?
>
> The average Mac user is going to have no clue about the difference
> between AFP, FTP, Samba, etc.; but they're going to be very disturbed
> by the performance of AFP connections. I know because I deal with
> questions about this in my consulting business all the time! It seems
> that there should be some incentive for Apple to fix this, or go in
> another direction altogether...
>
> It feel like TidBITS has had threads on this topic before, but I'm
> just really curious as to why the problem still exists, and why it
> appears Apple doesn't seem to care about fixing it!?!
>
> There are so many examples of how much slower the Finder is to copy,
> move and share files in comparison to other platforms. Why isn't
> Apple doing something to remedy this? I guess I'm largely motivated
> to post this having now upgraded several machines to Leopard, only to
> find that things are just the same in the new OS! How can the
> engineers at Apple look at themselves in the mirror in the morning??

Because remote access to the file system via a Wan link is a very small percentage need of the entire user base. Apple is still focused on the consumer sale. And it's a process that's growing market share. When the share starts to get big enough and enough departments start to go all Mac due to it, then they will start to address these "enterprise" things. If you look back it's what MS did.

Now as to performance of the Finder via a Wan, well even Windows wants you to flip into a special "FTP or WebDAV access method" driven by a GUI Explorer window and just drag files between windows. Which you can do with various Mac FTP clients.

Just an opinion
David Ross

This actually brings up a point that I've always wondered: why can I log in to FTP servers using the Mac OS Finder, but not write to them? In this net-connected world, why not make it easy on the user?

Apple's response seems to be: "Use a third-party program." What a cop-out.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107415>

Why, Steve?