A few questions about Linux

[Arkitech]

I would like to build a Linux box to work as my multimedia server. Attached to the Linux machine will be several storage arrays connected via a USB 2 cable. So my questions are:

Can I remote control a Linux machine from XP?

Can I configure a Linux machine to work with windows (NTFS) file systems? (I want to install Linux on my C and keep my other drives in that box as NTFS)

Is there any software that works with Linux that constantly monitors the hard drive status? (What I want to do is setup a program on Linux that will constantly monitor the health of all my hard drives (errors, bad sectors, etc..) and if something occurs I would like that program to send a message to my other machines on the network to notify me of what's happening?) Is there anything like that out there on the market?

thanks for the help

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Arkitech
Can I remote control a Linux machine from XP?

Yes. SSH on the server and Putty on the client is a good option.

Can I configure a Linux machine to work with windows (NTFS) file systems? (I want to install Linux on my C and keep my other drives in that box as NTFS)

You can, but it's not perfect. Lots of systems can read NTFS just fine, and now some can write it, but using a Linux filesystem is still preferred. JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, ext3, etc, are all good. Pick the one that suits your application.

Is there any software that works with Linux that constantly monitors the hard drive status? (What I want to do is setup a program on Linux that will constantly monitor the health of all my hard drives (errors, bad sectors, etc..) and if something occurs I would like that program to send a message to my other machines on the network to notify me of what's happening?) Is there anything like that out there on the market?

thanks for the help

I have no idea, but good question, I'd like to have something like this too. I don't know much about Linux hardware monitoring tools, other than I couldn't read the temp sensors on my motherboard no matter what I tried.

 

[nsafreak]

Can I remote control a Linux machine from XP?

Yep either something like UltraVNC (if you want GUI) or PuTTy for SSH (command line) are both widely used and both are typically available upon install of most distros.

Can I configure a Linux machine to work with windows (NTFS) file systems? (I want to install Linux on my C and keep my other drives in that box as NTFS)

When I installed SuSe 10.1 it automatically configured itself so that it could read files off my NTFS drive (I have Linux on a separate drive) and I figure most other recent distributions might do the same.

Is there any software that works with Linux that constantly monitors the hard drive status? (What I want to do is setup a program on Linux that will constantly monitor the health of all my hard drives (errors, bad sectors, etc..) and if something occurs I would like that program to send a message to my other machines on the network to notify me of what's happening?) Is there anything like that out there on the market?

GKRellM will do what you're looking for on that end as well.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Arkitech
Can I remote control a Linux machine from XP?

That's what SSH is for. VNC is OK if you need a GUI, but you'll be better served in the long run by learning how to use a shell.

Can I configure a Linux machine to work with windows (NTFS) file systems? (I want to install Linux on my C and keep my other drives in that box as NTFS)

You can, but it's really not ideal and is likely to present complications with permissions when you add file-sharing on top of it. It would be better to copy those files onto native Linux filesystems. This is easiest if you have one blank disk - copy A->Blank, B->A, C->B, etc.

Is there any software that works with Linux that constantly monitors the hard drive status?

smartd does everything you ask, and does it simply. Gkrellm is a much broader monitoring system. smartd should be available in all distros, possibly even installed and running by default.