"Sharing" a cd recorder over net

zen_guerrilla · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 343 Location: Greece

Hello world,
I have an all-linux lan (1 server + 12 clients, w/ nis & nfs) and I want to "share" a cd recorder I have installed on one of the clients. i.e. have it like a local device on each client so that cdrtools frontends work with it. Is there any way to do this ?
[I know I can use it w/ ssh & mkisofs+cdrecord & that's what I'm doing, but normal users here have difficulties running even k3b

]

.:: zen ::.

aardvark · Guru Joined: 30 Jun 2002 Posts: 576

Ok I cant be very accurate on this, but if I recall correctly, usermin (webmin) has a cdburn interface. You could have user log into the server (with the burner inside) using usermin on a webrowser. Have them copy their files to the server in a dir with a size equal to a CD and control the burn process through their webbrowser. I don't use this myself but I noticed it when I was browsing through webmin. It is under "hardware"
Maybe check it out.

True · Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2002 12:13 pm Post subject:

Hi, I setup a burner to share in our office a while back and found that the best way to do it was to use VNC. Set the VNC display to 800x600 and just leave the CD burner application open full screen. You can then create a VNC icon on a users desktop (Windows or Linux) that they can click on to open the session. Personally I found this solution a lot more user friendly than webmin (which I do like BTW), noone even knew it was a Linux box - until I told them ;-)

KiTaSuMbA · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 430 Location: Naples Italy

that's a very interesting thing to do on the whole! However, I think that a major problem - apart from front ends - is handling the cd burns in a "queue" mode (like printer jobs): otherwise there will be a lot of times when more than 1 client try to access the device simultaneously (wether you use ssh and terminal apps or vnc or remote X connections). In that regard, aardvark's suggestion is the best fitting answer to the problem. Even if there is no such support inside webmin or you don't want to install the whole thing a custom cgi interface could be easily built.
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True · Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2002 2:19 pm Post subject:

zen_guerrilla · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 343 Location: Greece

Thanx all for answering. I also found a program called webcdwriter on freshmeat.net & I'm gonna try as soon as I have time. The VNC solution is also interesting.
I also found that interesting link :
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/man/README/README.rscsi
Has anyone tried it ? If anyone has an already running setup & could try it out I' d be grateful, since I'm currently *VERY* busy setting up the new workstations & upgrading the older ones

.:: zen ::.[/url]

waverider202 · Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2002 5:36 pm Post subject: Hyper Scsi

HyperScsi is a program for sharing ide/scsi devices on a net. It does exactly what you want, except the whole queue thing. Heres some links http://freshmeat.net/releases/95543/ and [url]http://nst.dsi.a-star.edu.sg/mcsa/lxr/hyperscsi/ [/url]
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zen_guerrilla · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 343 Location: Greece