Linux Equivalent to Windows Home Server

[Liberator21]

I was really impressed with the reviews of Windows Home Server. Two critical downfalls however, is it only works with Windows machines, and only 32-bit Windows machines. I'm not running that.

Now I know it wouldn't be as straight forward as WHS, but what's the best distro for this type of work? Preferably a headless unit with a web-based interface. Thanks, I've got the spare hardware and really want to put this together. My two computers utilizing it would be a 64-bit Vista install and an Ubuntu.

Thanks!

 

[Nothinman]

Right now I know of nothing that will do the automatic drive spanning or backups. You can install Samba on any distro and setup some scheduled backups with things like rsync though.

 

[TSDible]

What about something like Free NAS?

http://www.freenas.org/

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Originally posted by: Liberator21
I was really impressed with the reviews of Windows Home Server. Two critical downfalls however, is it only works with Windows machines, and only 32-bit Windows machines. I'm not running that.

Now I know it wouldn't be as straight forward as WHS, but what's the best distro for this type of work? Preferably a headless unit with a web-based interface. Thanks, I've got the spare hardware and really want to put this together. My two computers utilizing it would be a 64-bit Vista install and an Ubuntu.

Thanks!

It'd depend on what you need the server to do.

This can be VERY straightforward.

Depending on your needs, i'd probably go with Debian but that is mostly because i like debian and it is extremely flexible, i'd set up a standard Samba server, install the components i need for it to do, install SSH and use that to SSH into it from anyplace i want to, but if you truly need a web interface (i don't get why you'd need that, it makes very little sense to me) i'd probably set up a web server interface via webmin which i'd rather not do.

You just install webmin (i think this was removed from the Debian repos so you'll have to get it at their site) on your server and you connect to it from whatever browser you use on the other machines.

 

[Brazen]

Ubuntu Server LTS + Webmin

 

[Liberator21]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still doing research on all of that, and it's great info. By the way I wanted the remote web interface because it will be a headless unit running in the closet. Is there another way to run it?

 

[Netopia]

Originally posted by: Liberator21
Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still doing research on all of that, and it's great info. By the way I wanted the remote web interface because it will be a headless unit running in the closet. Is there another way to run it?

Yes, there is.

I have an anti-spam/anti-virus gateway setup at one of my customers, and it's running Debian. I installed the NX server on it, and use the NX client software to connect remotely to a desktop on the Debian machine. I love NX... so much faster than VNC and it can encrypt data and use port 22 (SSH).


It's been about a year now, so I don't remember the specifics of the install, but some googling should get you everything you need to know.

BTW... personally, I LIKE Webmin, and just use it in httpS mode, though on boxes like the one mentioned above, I use IP tables to restrict what IP addresses can connect to the box on Webmin's port (10000).

Joe

 

[Nothinman]

By the way I wanted the remote web interface because it will be a headless unit running in the closet. Is there another way to run it?

Of course, just use SSH to do all of your administration.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Netopia

Originally posted by: Liberator21
Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still doing research on all of that, and it's great info. By the way I wanted the remote web interface because it will be a headless unit running in the closet. Is there another way to run it?

Yes, there is.

I have an anti-spam/anti-virus gateway setup at one of my customers, and it's running Debian. I installed the NX server on it, and use the NX client software to connect remotely to a desktop on the Debian machine. I love NX... so much faster than VNC and it can encrypt data and use port 22 (SSH).


It's been about a year now, so I don't remember the specifics of the install, but some googling should get you everything you need to know.

BTW... personally, I LIKE Webmin, and just use it in httpS mode, though on boxes like the one mentioned above, I use IP tables to restrict what IP addresses can connect to the box on Webmin's port (10000).

Joe

So do you restrict the ip addresses that can connect to NX, also? You know, allowing connections through NX is probably going to be WAY more insecure than Webmin.

Originally posted by: Nothinman

By the way I wanted the remote web interface because it will be a headless unit running in the closet. Is there another way to run it?

Of course, just use SSH to do all of your administration.

:thumbsup:

 

[erwos]

You could probably get comparable functionality out of Linux, but I can guarantee you that it'll take way, way longer to set up than just using WHS. If you just want something that's doing some simple Samba sharing, yeah, that's trivial. Once you get beyond that, things get hairy. It is _definitely_ not one of those cases where you're just init'ing a service or three and it just auto-magically works.

 

[Netopia]

Brazen,

On this particular box, the ONLY port that is openly accessible by the public is 25, as this is a mail gateway. All other ports are restricted to connections from the company's internal network, the sub-net of addresses at my main office, and my home.

The setup I've described above however, would NOT allow for general remote access from anywhere like WHS does.

I suppose you could open ports and run something like this though:

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13841/53/1/1/

Joe

 

[gboudreau]

I was really impressed with the reviews of Windows Home Server. Two critical downfalls however, is it only works with Windows machines, and only 32-bit Windows machines. I'm not running that.

Now I know it wouldn't be as straight forward as WHS, but what's the best distro for this type of work? Preferably a headless unit with a web-based interface. Thanks, I've got the spare hardware and really want to put this together. My two computers utilizing it would be a 64-bit Vista install and an Ubuntu.

Thanks!

Hi there.

(I realize this post if quite old, but I found it when researching for WHS Drive Extender alternatives, so I thought others might find it too.)

I just posted the first public version of Greyhole - Easily expandable & redundant storage pool using Samba.
It's an open source implementation of something like Drive Extender.

If any of you guys want to help me test it, I'd be happy to get some help in finding bugs.
Once it's been tested enough, it should become a nice alternative to WHS Drive Extender!

You can read the details here:
http://www.pommepause.com/blog/2009...xpandable-redundant-storage-pool-using-samba/

Cheers.

 

[Jodell88]

spam bot?

 

[whoiswes]

Late to the party but my rather minimal home server is running Slax (http://www.slax.org) off a USB thumbdrive. I have a software RAID-5 array with all of my data.

Management is through SSH, which works, but I'm looking forward to the rewrite of FreeNas...having a simple web interface to manage the entire system (monitor the array, manage torrents, etc) would be very nice.

 

[gboudreau]

spam bot?

A spam bot with an avatar, which posts about a free & open-source product that answers (at least partly) the question asked by the thread opener..?

 

[Zargon]

WHS only works on 32 bit...?

 

[Brazen]

Hi there.

(I realize this post if quite old, but I found it when researching for WHS Drive Extender alternatives, so I thought others might find it too.)

I just posted the first public version of Greyhole - Easily expandable & redundant storage pool using Samba.
It's an open source implementation of something like Drive Extender.

If any of you guys want to help me test it, I'd be happy to get some help in finding bugs.
Once it's been tested enough, it should become a nice alternative to WHS Drive Extender!

You can read the details here:
http://www.pommepause.com/blog/2009...xpandable-redundant-storage-pool-using-samba/

Cheers.

I don't really get how this has any advantage over raid/lvm.

 

[Circlenaut]

Check out Amahi Home Server. Tis what I'm running and i love it.

 

[gboudreau]

I don't really get how this has any advantage over raid/lvm.

With RAID/LVM:
- You can't read the content of each drive individually. With Greyhole, you can just take out any of the drive, plug it somewhere else, and you'll see the files stored on this HDD where you expect them to be.
- You can't decide what's important, what's not, and what's super-important. With Greyhole, you can decide to keep only one copy of each file you don't care that much about, 2 copies (on two different HDD) of the files you care about, and as many copies as you have hard drives of the files you really care about.
- It can be complicated to add more space, depending on your RAID setup. With Greyhole, just plug a new drive (format it if it's not already formatted), mount it, and add one line in the config file and you're done. You don't have to care about getting same sized disks or what-not.

I was using RAID before; and I was wasting ton of HDD space on uncompressed HD recordings I don't care that much about. My 60k+ digital pictures (that I really do care about!) were protected as much as those terabytes to recorded TV shows... And adding space to my RAID-5 array was unpleasant, especially with the limited numbers of IDE/SATA port in a conventional PC... And I couldn't add USB drives in my RAID array.

All those problems made me start using WHS Drive Extender, which does resolve most of those. Greyhole resolves the rest.

 

[Brazen]

With RAID/LVM:
- You can't read the content of each drive individually. With Greyhole, you can just take out any of the drive, plug it somewhere else, and you'll see the files stored on this HDD where you expect them to be.
- You can't decide what's important, what's not, and what's super-important. With Greyhole, you can decide to keep only one copy of each file you don't care that much about, 2 copies (on two different HDD) of the files you care about, and as many copies as you have hard drives of the files you really care about.
- It can be complicated to add more space, depending on your RAID setup. With Greyhole, just plug a new drive (format it if it's not already formatted), mount it, and add one line in the config file and you're done. You don't have to care about getting same sized disks or what-not.

I was using RAID before; and I was wasting ton of HDD space on uncompressed HD recordings I don't care that much about. My 60k+ digital pictures (that I really do care about!) were protected as much as those terabytes to recorded TV shows... And adding space to my RAID-5 array was unpleasant, especially with the limited numbers of IDE/SATA port in a conventional PC... And I couldn't add USB drives in my RAID array.

All those problems made me start using WHS Drive Extender, which does resolve most of those. Greyhole resolves the rest.

Ah, well put. I don't have time to play with new things now, but I'll keep this project in mind.

 

[cganesh75]

amahi sounds interesting.

 

[Satyrist]

Perhaps Clarkconnect?

Fake edit: Now called ClearOS.

This distro is merely a stripped-down CentOS install, with only the essentials required for samba, gateway/firewall, and routing services, and generally intended to be run headless after installation. Pretty easy to set up, and administer thereafter.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

WHS only works on 32 bit...?

WHS itself is 32-bit, but it will backup and work with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows (up to and including Windows 7).

 

[Fallen Kell]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still doing research on all of that, and it's great info. By the way I wanted the remote web interface because it will be a headless unit running in the closet. Is there another way to run it?

Just about every linux distribution will run headless just fine. All you need is sshd anyway. Linux is really command line 1st, GUI last (or not at all).

 

[af1c0069ea05d4d64be330224]

Have you looked at:

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9015653445.html