Possible to have outside computer access samba behind router

[midnight4545]

Hi, I'm fairly new at this. I just bought a new printer that me and a friend want to share. I have a linux box running Redhat 8.0 and Samba 2.2.5 behind a router. My friend's compuer lives outside the router. How could I go about getting his computer to access the samba server? The server works because I'm able to access it through my Xp machine also behind the router.

 

[sleipnir214]

I very strongly recommend against providing access to Mi¢ro$oft network protocols to the general internet. If you are going to do it, I strongly recommend that you set up a VPN between your two networks.

That being said, your question cannot be answered as asked. There are too many network possibilities. Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[midnight4545]

Ok, is it then possible to have one outside IP access the server, I know my friends IP address, and block out all other outside computers?

 

[John Lewis]

Whether or not you are able to allow a single ip access to an internal resource depends upon the router. Might be possible, maybe not. Samba, however, is very poorly suited to this kind of application. Samba sends a lot of broadcast packets, pretty much announces that you are running Samba and invites everyone to try. Never never never enable Samba on an interface that connects to the internet.

sleipnir214 has the right idea . . . VPN! If you can get Samba running, you can get Poptop (

http://www.poptop.org/)

running -- it's not really difficult. There are other linux VPNs out there, some links toward the middle of the Poptop home page. Windows comes with the software that is needed on the client side, not hard to deal with, either. Your router will need to be able to forward TCP on port 1723 and pass pptp or forward GRE.

When you create the VPN connection, a virtual network interface is created. You can enable Samba on this interface without exposing your server to the public internet. You can control the ip's that are allowed to connect through the VPN configuration. You could add another layer of security by setting up a simple firewall.

 

[midnight4545]

Ok, thanks I'll give it a shot