Using Fish
by Daiver Pedemonte
Here's a quick and easy method for setting up a network and accessing remote files. Please note: this works only if SSH is properly enabled in both computers.
The FISH protocol
I was having a lot of trouble setting up a network using NFS. SMB was out of the question. All I wanted to do was access another computer in my LAN which holds all the media files and acts like a storage room for documents, pictures, etc. without having to use NFS. This is just one of the many ways that you can share files among computers in KDE.
FISH will not allow you to stream audio or video via LAN, but it is probably the easiest way to access your files on another computer. Using FISH, you will be able to copy files locally and store files remotely, assuming the right permissions are set.
Take FISH for a test drive:
- Open Konqueror.
- In the address bar, type:
fish://IP_ADDRESS_OF_REMOTE_COMPUTER
(In my case, the IP address was 192.168.10.2.) - Enter the user and password of the remote computer. (Do not use root.)
This will send you to the home directory of the remote computer's user that you typed in. However, it is possible to view mounted drives in it, and if the permissions are set correctly, you will also be able to write to the drives.
To view the mounted drives, edit the URL to go to the root filesystem (/) and then navigate to /mnt. Your drives and partitions are there.
The easiest way to set up a quick access is to create a shortcut on the KDE desktop:
- Right click on the desktop and select "Create new -> Link to location".
- Put a name to the path to be accessed on the remote computer. If you are going to make the shortcut to access an MP3 directory, then something like MP3 will work or use Docs for documents, etc.
- Enter the URL to the path to be accessed when you click the shortcut. In my case it was:
fish://user_name@192.168.10.2/mnt/sdb1/Mp3.
(Replace user_name with the username on the computer you want to access.)
Now, any time I want to access my remote storage, I can just click that shortcut and it will take me there. For security reasons, I never save the password, so I just type it in every time.
Best of all, it works using SSH, so everything that goes through FISH is encrypted and secure.
Happy fishing!