[ale] One file, two LANs

[Mike Harrison]

This is the land of simple web based databases,
Trying to share a file that will become out of sync
or corrupted as multiple people edit/view/save/read it.
There are ways, kludges and shims, but in reality what you need
is a simple web based database editor.

Other ways include: Google App's - Sharing a spreadsheet.
or one of the many groupware tools like eGroupware or iOffice
that allow a person to 'check out' the spreadsheet for editing,
which locks other people from writing over it while you have it.
You can also do some kewl things with file perms, ownership and such
on the system you share it in.. Allowing the office 'read only' access
and one person "read/write" access. - My personal experience with these
(file perm schemes) is that it's just a matter of time before
something goes wrong and it becomes a 0 byte length file, or worse,
gets auto-updated with last weeks version (which was running in the 
background) when someone's computer shuts down and no-one notices
the missing data for 3 more weeks.




On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, William Bagwell wrote:

> Can a document be shared to two separate LANs with absolutely no other
> bridging or cross accessibility, using a typical Linux desktop distro?
> (Happens to be Mandriva, but I don't think this matters)
>
> An idea was floated, then promptly squashed dead, to allow factory personell
> to keep a simple location spreadsheet updated. Obviously, this could be done
> with a stand alone computer not connected to anything. Naturally the folks in
> the office wanted to access it from the comfort of their office. Impasse...
>
> Having the only Linux box at my work:) It seems to my simple mind that; A
> second NIC, a cheep simple LAN, (Or possibly just a direct connection) and a
> separate partion for the single shared document to live in. Then make sure
> nothing like Samba server is installed.
>
> What am I forgeting?
>