I have noticed Ubuntu has several mechanisms to share folders with other machines on a network:
For example, if I am in
Nautilus(the file manager), I can right click on a folder, go to
Properties, and then go to the tab
Share this folder.
I can also install
samba, edit the file
/etc/samba/smb.confto enable access to a specific folder and start the service.
I noticed that if I use both approaches simultaneously to enable access to the same folder, I can actually see two links to the same folder on Explorer when I access my machine through a network path from Windows.
My questions are:
What is the first mechanism based on? (is it running another instance of samba behind the scenes? If so, where is the
smb.conffile for it?
Why the redundancy?
Are there any other mechanisms to share folders?
For reference, this is all on Ubuntu 12.04, from a virtual machine (Virtual Box) from within Windows 7 64.