[vox-tech] Easy breezy file sharing in KDE

[Bill Kendrick]

So, apparently things like Samba and NFS aren't trival to set up, even
using the GUI interfaces available under Linux (e.g., right-clicking a file
and selecting "Share" in Konqueror or on the K Destkop).

What I wanted was a simple way of sharing a single file on my apartment LAN
without resorting to FTP, SFTP or munging around in NFS configuration files.

Thankfully, someone named 'lauri' in the #kde channel gave me the answer:
"kpf", part of the "kdenetwork" package.  It's an applet for KDE's kicker
task bar which you can access via right-click Add->Applet->Public File Server.

Specify a folder (which you WANT to be accessible by anyone who can point
a browser at your computer), and an unpriveleged port (e.g., the default
it suggests: 8001), and then people can access files over HTTP by going to:

  http://yourcomputer:8001/

You can limit the network transfer speed (it defaulted to 4Kbps for me,
which was ridiculously slow, so I cranked it up to the physical limit of
my network: 100Mbps), and it shows you a little graph of any network
activity right over the applet.

There's also a separate "Monitor" window you can bring up that shows more
specific details.

You can run multiple servers, remove servers, and pause and unpause them.


It seems strange running a server out of my taskbar applet, but it really
is quite handy!


Next on my list of things to play with: remote desktop viewing & sharing
under KDE.

-bill!