File server advice

nesf

Thinking of turning my old PC and its drives into a file server for the house. Any advice on doing this? I figure the CPU, Memory etc are all fine for the job (8GB and a dual core chip) and the 750W PS should be plenty for what I have in mind.

Is Ubuntu with Samba the way to go for a mixed environment of Mac OSX and Windows machines?

Tea_Bag

can't say for sure, but I think the new OSX (lion?) is having issues with SAMBA, or they disabled it by default or something. I remember reading it in the Mac forum, which I occasionally browse for giggles.

I'd do the Googling myself but I'm on my mobile anf lazy :pac:

OT : my favorite threads: "should I buy a MAC" in the Mac forum! no bias in that.

EDIT: here's a jargon filled website explaining what you can and can't do, and hacks.

linky

nesf

No more bias than if someone started a "Should I buy a Mac?" thread here...

You're right though, there's problems with Samba atm now that I remember it. Google time...

nesf

Right can do it with an NFS share.

uberpixie

The hardware you have is more than plenty.

Personally when I went to build a fileshare I went with this http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=ECE2285739.

Very low power usuage and will take four harddrives plus another if you skip installing a dvd drive. It is also very quiet and is tiny in size. This or soemthing similar is worth considering if you old hardware runs noisey or hot.

Linux choice is up to you I went with a basic debian 6 install. I installed ssh and samba as part of the install of the os and installed a vnc server on top of this.

Due to my unfamiliarity with linux it took me a little while to figure things out e.g. Getting my fstab file correctly mounting the media drive I added to the server, getting vnc running on the server and being able to connect to the server from windows 7 and of course getting samba to share the media harddrive. All basic stuff tbh but coming from Windows land there is a learning curve to say the least.

Another option for os would be windows home server which you can find online for under €50 if you want the easy life. Someone I know at work went windows,home server and is happy with it.

nesf

uberpixie wrote: »

The hardware you have is more than plenty.

Personally when I went to build a fileshare I went with this http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=ECE2285739.

Very low power usuage and will take four harddrives plus another if you skip installing a dvd drive. It is also very quiet and is tiny in size. This or soemthing similar is worth considering if you old hardware runs noisey or hot.

Linux choice is up to you I went with a basic debian 6 install. I installed ssh and samba as part of the install of the os and installed a vnc server on top of this.

Due to my unfamiliarity with linux it took me a little while to figure things out e.g. Getting my fstab file correctly mounting the media drive I added to the server, getting vnc running on the server and being able to connect to the server from windows 7 and of course getting samba to share the media harddrive. All basic stuff tbh but coming from Windows land there is a learning curve to say the least.

Another option for os would be windows home server which you can find online for under €50 if you want the easy life. Someone I know at work went windows,home server and is happy with it.

Noise and size aren't an issue as it's going into the attic office which isn't used that much.

Going to go the Linux route with it because I want to play around with Linux again after a few years break. The learning curve is welcome, want a project that isn't too easy.

Darkphenom

IMO ubuntu or debian would be a good choice for a file server. Might I also recommend making a little test virtual machine so that you get used to the cli and setting everything up (maybe your already familiar with linux). I think in the long run linux is more stable, easier to adapt, and is more secure than the likes of a windows server.

nesf

Darkphenom wrote: »

IMO ubuntu or debian would be a good choice for a file server. Might I also recommend making a little test virtual machine so that you get used to the cli and setting everything up (maybe your already familiar with linux). I think in the long run linux is more stable, easier to adapt, and is more secure than the likes of a windows server.

Been messing around with Linux on and off for ten years. Wouldn't consider myself particularly good with it but have never found anything I couldn't make a Linux box do with a bit of googling.

Redisle

Might want to get a plugin power meter to check your idle power consumption.. Could end up adding quite a bit to the power bill!

On another note there is plenty of other cool things you could also use a Linux server for. Eg. Run tvheadend to stream dvb-t or dvb-s tv to xbmc clients, get a cctv capture card and run zoneminder to do some security monitoring..

Actually been meaning to change my own server to linux to do those very things. Only reason I haven't is that I like the speed of windows rdp over vnc and I am using a pptp vpn on the server which isn't easily supported in linux. Prob going to do it over christmas though!

machalla

If you want a pre-built file server this is a handy distro.

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/fileserver

I'd tend to just install Ubuntu or Centos and with a machine like you have I'd say you could do a lot more with it if you want than just simple file storage. Media streaming (Plex), transcoding (handbrake), who knows what else.

Theres also Freenas

PogMoThoin

Tea_Bag wrote: »

can't say for sure, but I think the new OSX (lion?) is having issues with SAMBA, or they disabled it by default or something. I remember reading it in the Mac forum, which I occasionally browse for giggles.

What Apple don't want you to know is that the GPL for the latest Samba 3 (SMB) protocol being open source, now does not allow for it to be used in proprietary systems, therefore Apple have their own proprietary SMB implementation (a hacked version of Samba 2) that does not work well with legacy SMB clients.

Darkphenom

machalla wrote: »

Theres also Freenas

Thats true but I find that the Freenas 8 release is somewhat limited in that there is no bittorrent, UPNP or Itunes media server included. Apart from that it has excellent features. Atm I am running Freenas 7 but I will probably switch over to ubuntu soon.