Best OS for a home fileserver?

[Nighthawk69]

Hi there,

I am looking into setting up a fileserver for my home, which will mostly be for MP3's but there will be some other files on there as well. I will be using a Pentium II 266 with 96MB of ram for the system. I already have Windows 2000 Server setup and running well on that system, so my question is, should I use Win2000 Server for this, or should I use some Linux distribution? If Windows, what needs to be setup? Just share a drive? If Linux, what distribution and how hard is it to setup--I'm a newbie to Linux but I know Windows fairly well.

Thanks!

 

[vi edit]

Depends on how adventurous you want to be. If you want to learn something new, download a linux distro and tinker around with it.

If you want something up and running as fast as possible, just throw 2k pro on there. No need for 2k server. All it will do is add addtional services that you'll never, ever use, ultimately slowing down the box. All you are doing is sharing out MP3 files. A simple Win9X machine would do it just fine too.

 

[Nothinman]

Both will do the job fine, if you want to learn Linux then pick a distro and go ahead, if not stick with Windows.

 

[Nighthawk69]

Thanks for the info guys! I think since Win2k is already on there (and configured to run like pro, ie: took out all the unneeded services, etc.) I will go ahead and just throw another HD on there nad use that.

 

[ttn1]

As for performance on a pII box, I would have to say that you can make linux much leaner and meaner. I run linux on all three fo my fileservers here at home. I also run a linux router project router for my cable connection. I have had my webserver up for over a year with about a half hour downtime to upgrade. It is well worth it to run linux. The ability to install software and "not" reboot is a wonderful thing.

At work I run both a linux and a win2k server. I prefer the linux server now that I am familiar. I have grown very fond of the command prompt and only have X windows installed on one of my linux boxes.

I run a web-based mp3 streamer which is very handy. It is called RIMPS and is a sourceforge project. Allows you to stream mp3s anywhere you have a net connection. On a home network it is very nice. Lets you create playlists and do searches. I warn you that it takes a while to setup, but once it's up it is sweet.

Linux is definitely a long term project though. I would give yourself at least a few days of tinkering to get samba up. samba is the folder sharing utility.

As for distros I have only ever used Redhat, so that is what I recommend.

 

[Nighthawk69]

ttn1: That sounds cool! It is definitely something I would like to do, and if I am able to go 802.11b I will be using a router for sharing my net connection so this PII box will be dedicated to being a fileserver fulltime and not a router as it is now.

I'll check out RIMPS now...

Thanks!

 

[spidey07]

Netware6

best performance, best security, best directory services, best uptime...well you get the point.

But if you've got 2000 server then your good to go, heck 2000pro would be fine. For the price of that 2000server I'm sure you could get NW6.

 

[Nothinman]

NetWare 6 is out of beta? Anyway don't you think setting up a whole NDS tree for his house is a little overkill? And NetWare licenses are expensive as hell for a home user.

 

[spidey07]

True, but he did say best.

 

[Nothinman]

Best is highly relative and NetWare is far from the best in his situation =)

 

[spidey07]

don't get me started *nix boy.

 

[Nighthawk69]

Thanks for the input guys! I actually think using Win2k would be easiest and best for my few computers right now. If it gets flakey I will look into Linux, but I have had nothing but great experiences so far since switching my computers over to Windows 2000.

Thanks again!! Happy Holidays!

 

[Valhalla1]

well I have 2 similar systems on my network, a p2-350 laptop and a p2-350 pc. I dual boot xp and redhat on the laptop, and the pc is a redhat 7.2 file server.

when I am booted into xp on the laptop, I can always access the linux file server network drive instantly and browse through the folders seemingly faster than browsing my own hard drive. but there is always a little annoying lag browsing the laptop's network share. i really like linux as a file server, my machine has been up since I first installed it almost a month ago and its recently been cracking eccp 24/7 and it efforlessly streams mp3's while transferring several gb worth of data back and forth on the network and it doesn't choke

 

[Nothinman]

don't get me started *nix boy.

We use NetWare where I work, ZenWorks rocks, and I like the technology (although the overzealous users leave something to be desired) but I'm not too fond of the company or their licensing practices and you have to admit it's extreme overkill for the situation.

 

[FUBAR]

As a general answer to the question of home fileservers, I'd go with a Linux...

Chances are, at home you are using your old desktop box for a server, you can make a much sleeker install of a Linux if it's tuned well. Hell, if you don't install X you're halfway there already. Also, you can toss that box in a closet and leave it headless. Run VNC or simply a telnet/ssh client to admin. Samba can be done from a browser with SWAT. I know there's some remote admin tools for 2k/NT, but they don't seem as easy to admin.

Plus, if you ever have a broadband to hook up, forward a port in to your box and you've got a decent server for your remote access needs. Reverse mount your windows shares and you've got full net access from a single point.

 

[Nighthawk69]

OK, so say I used RedHat. Would I simply do a "standard" type install? Then what? Is there anything that needs to be done except install Samba?

Details are apprecaited, of course

 

[Valhalla1]

redhat 7.2, be sure to install the software developers group (it installs the compilers you will need to install any software). Do a "custom" setup so you can select samba and whatever else you think you might want to try (dns, ftp, apache)


also if you want to configure samba thru SWAT (which allows you to configure samba thru a web browser) you might have to manually select it to install, not sure if does this be default.

personally, I didnt like swat and preferred to directly mess with the samba config file, you'll learn more this way


one thing to keep in mind, samba won't talk out of the box with NT, win2k, winxp machines because they use encrytped passwords to access network shares, you'll have to build a samba passwd file and set the passwords OR disable encrypted passwords on the windows boxes with a reg hack. the instructions on making the samba passwd file are in the samba documentation (ENCRYPTION.TXT)


honestly I'd say give yourself a couple days of messing around with samba till you have it working, but I had a nice feeling of accomplishment after I had it running and I am very glad I chose linux as the file server os
and let us know if you have problems! I found a lot of help at the arstechnica Linux forum

 

[Nighthawk69]

Valhalla1: Sounds good. This won't be done until sometime mid-January at the earliest as the 802.11b upgrade needs to come first, and if that does not come through, then there won't be any fileserver anyway

Happy Holidays!

 

[lowtech1]

Uses what you are comfortable with, but if you want to try Linux?then look no further than Debian minimum install of 45 megs & is very quick to serve.

 

[Valhalla1]

just saw you mention you were going wireless network.. anyone know how the support for 802.11b in linux is currently ?

 

[Valhalla1]

i dont know if i would tell a newbie to use debian, when I installed debian once I was so appalled with the installation process using f-ing 'dcollect' or whatever, the endless dependencies and blah blah. redhat or mandrake for newbies I think. or maybe corel but their history

 

[xyyz]

<< Netware6

best performance, best security, best directory services, best uptime...well you get the point.

But if you've got 2000 server then your good to go, heck 2000pro would be fine. For the price of that 2000server I'm sure you could get NW6. >>



huh? where did this come from? I haven't heard of netware performance in a long time... I guess I need to actually read these periodicals before they get recycled... but do you have a link that talks about how Netware 6 outperforms other OSes?

I have a samba server running on FreeBSD 4.4

I found this to be by far the easiest setup... and i'm a *nix idiot... The installation was pretty simple, (make clean && make && make install) it was all menu driven and the freebsd box is rock solid. Also, FreeBSD's support is amazing... post a question on freebsd-questions@freebsd.org and you get a reply in a few hours... sometimes even a few minutes... and noone's a jerk about helping you either. Hell, I had a committer walk me through a pretty complicated problem, from the beginning to the end.

 

[xyyz]

<< don't get me started *nix boy.

We use NetWare where I work, ZenWorks rocks, and I like the technology (although the overzealous users leave something to be desired) but I'm not too fond of the company or their licensing practices and you have to admit it's extreme overkill for the situation. >>



these guys are real bastards when it comes to licencing...

I have several multiple user licences I got from a dot-com that went belly-up... I tried to sell one on ebay and Novell shut me down... I had to become a Novell partner to resell the item (an item, mind you that they already collected their outragous fees on) I had to undergo some ultra complicated process to get the licence transfered to me... and then the person that I sold it to had to get the licence retransfered to them.... and all approval was up to the whim of their legal department.

 

[Nothinman]

huh? where did this come from? I haven't heard of netware performance in a long time... I guess I need to actually read these periodicals before they get recycled...

Or try it out, we have several NW 3.x, 4.x and 5.x (the NW guys want to ditch the bindery servers and upgrade the 4.x to 5.x so we can stop using IPX) and they all outperform NT4 for fileserving pretty consistently. Enough that users complained when something was moved from a NetWare server to an NT box, it was shortly moved back.

these guys are real bastards when it comes to licencing...

Yup, a now Linux developer that used to work for them has been going back and forth with them for a while, he's trying to develop some NetWare interoperability tools/drivers for Linux and they keep throwing lawyers at him.

edit: spelling

 

[Nighthawk69]

Valhalla1: The file server will not on wireless. It will be connected via CAT5 with a 10Mbps NIC to the wireless router, as they will be right next to each other... then the wireless people can access the fileserver.

Regards,