Mapping Unix Directories to Windows

Samba is what you're looking for. Keep in mind, though, that the ports used by Samba are blocked if your Linode is at The Planet, and some ISPs also block SMB/CIFS traffic.

Unless I'm mistaken you'll have to tunnel the Samba/Windows connection through some sort of VPN. Or at least I'd never try it any other way! Thinking of using Windows Networking (SMB) on the open Internet gives me the shivers.

You can map a WebDAV (http://) drive which should be simpler than trying to route SMB packets across the Internet. Apache has a module for it, and it might work over SSL so you don't end up leaving the entire contents of your home directory open to network sniffers.

You can also map FTP drives, and any FTP server installed on your Linode should serve up home directories by default (or with the flick of a switch). This is probably the easiest method, but plain old FTP is about as insecure as protocols come… ok hacking SMB to go over the net without tunneling is less secure, but its a lose-lose situation.

The open source program WinSCP is completely secure, uses SSH, and has wonderful directory synchronization features. Its not quite as handy as plain old drive-mapping, but definitely more secure and actually more reliable (my experience with mapping WebDAV drives isn't good).

webdav (over https) werkt voor mij tot nog toe het beste met windows. Windows noemt dit 'webfolders'.

http://www.akadia.com/services/mod_dav.html geeft een duidelijke beschrijving hoe dit werkt.

Erm… well, check out the above url which has a nice walkthrough of how to set up webdav with apache. Ignore the rest. I should get some more sleep…

I use samba and openvpn, that's another option, especially in the unlikely case that you don't use apache at all. Samba will talk to most windows versions and openvpn has a good windows client. As others said I'd never trust windows networking packets over the internet, and plain ftp is also not something i'd trust for anything secure.