building file server os help needed

[saimike]

it seems that my promise/maxtor ata100 pci controller doesnt work with win2k very well -- i only get 10MByte/s which is waaay low for ata100. tried everything but no dice.

so i thought i'd give linux a shot to see if it'll get me anywhere.

the pc is a celeron 1ghz, 512mb ram, 500gb of hdd space formated in ntfs. aside from trying to achieve ata100 speeds, i'd like it to boot up asap so i'd prob do a minimum install and "startx" should i need the gui for some diskspace house keeping. i'll also be running samba and ftp for my LAN (no WAN ftp).

any suggestions? i'm not very up-to-date with the various distros although a friend mentioned mandrake and we use redhat at work at times.

 

[sigs3gv]

Slackware is an excellent server OS. My file server at home is running Slackware 10.2 with default kernel running Samba. It's been up for 40 days with no problem.

 

[Varun]

Suse is going to replace Netware soon from Novell. It's probably got far more than you need though, but it works with eDirectory!

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Debian.

 

[Nothinman]

Debian.

 

[saimike]

whats the strong point of debian?

after some searching around, i'm wondering if the lightweight distros would work. afterall, the only time i'll want the GUI is when i need to do some house keeping. (i'm not man enough to type it all out *grin*)

 

[Nothinman]

You don't need a GUI for that. You're setting up a file server, right? Manage the files from your workstation.

 

[saimike]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
You don't need a GUI for that. You're setting up a file server, right? Manage the files from your workstation.

how would that be done? sorry, i guess i'm used to logging into it now and using windows explorer to move file around.

 

[Nothinman]

How do you plan on getting to the files on your file server? I would assume via explorer, right?

 

[nweaver]

1. Ditch NTFS is you are going with linux (this is not optional)
2. Debian, strong points-reliablity with updates (I would probably feel safe about apt-get update && apt-get upgrade in a weekly cron script), package management (apt-get is EXTREMLY hard to beat), H/W (should work out of box with testing branch, probalby with stable too), bloat (server install without UI, easy enough to install X and a minimalistic GUI like XFCE, although with only running samba/cifs, ssh would be better),

biggest reason to run Debian, is nothinman won't flame you for running Gentoo and spending 3 days to get the box running


really though, Debian, server install with samba, openssh-server, ftp server of choice would rule the roost. You have more hardware then you need, that would run fine on a P2 400 with 256 MB of ram easily, especially when you don't have to run a GUI (biggest complaint with running headless windows boxes)

 

[yuchai]

If you're trying to troubleshoot your ata controller I would suggest trying out a Live CD first. Knoppix comes to mind.

 

[Need4Speed]

deb