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File Server Box OS Advice Needed
1ddqd
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have my old gaming PC that has a bunch of stuff (2TB) on it. I want to be able to use this as a file server now, presently, it has a clean install of XP. I want to be able to access this box on demand (i.e. wake-on-lan) and when I'm done accessing it, the box shuts down. I would like to use ubuntu to free up an XP license for a little Shuttle KPC I'm building, but if XP does things better, then that's good too.
OS needs to be: remote desktop capable, network wake on lan capable, simple, lightweight
Goal:
A box sitting in the corner of my office, 2 cords: AC and Ethernet.
Candidates: (will update this as suggestions are offered)
Windows XP - storage also on OS drive
Ubuntu - storage also on OS drive
ArchLinux - storage also on OS drive
*Edit*
Sorry, specs:
Intel 3.0ghz P4 800mhz FSB
Gigabyte 8KNXP Rev 1
2GB PC3200
XFX Geforce 6800 XT 128MB
2x WD500AKS
1x Seagate 7200.10 500GB
1x Maxtor 500GB
OS needs to be: remote desktop capable, network wake on lan capable, simple, lightweight
Goal:
A box sitting in the corner of my office, 2 cords: AC and Ethernet.
Candidates: (will update this as suggestions are offered)
Windows XP - storage also on OS drive
Ubuntu - storage also on OS drive
ArchLinux - storage also on OS drive
*Edit*
Sorry, specs:
Intel 3.0ghz P4 800mhz FSB
Gigabyte 8KNXP Rev 1
2GB PC3200
XFX Geforce 6800 XT 128MB
2x WD500AKS
1x Seagate 7200.10 500GB
1x Maxtor 500GB
1ddqd on
0
Posts
http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software/wakeonlan/mini-howto/
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=234588
So very very overkill. You can use a slower-clocked CPU, half the RAM (or even less) and either onboard video or a really weak AGP video card.
Also, I want to buy your old parts.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
a 3.0GHz P4 really is a shitty CPU in this day and age. Fileservers like ram, the more the better, and the 6800XT *is* a weak video card. While ATI used to name their high end video cards XT's, nVidia named pretty much their shittiest video cards the XT's.
I'd do ubuntu.
You overestimate how much horsepower is required to blindly serve files over SMB/NFS/FTP/ETC. It's somewhere between "Jack" and "Shit." An old P3 or Celeron can do it, and run passively cooled.
Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the 6800XT's ranking, and it is a "weak video card" by today's standards, but a file server doesn't need a video card at all except maybe a $5 PCI card for diagnostics if it fails to POST. It definitely doesn't need one that requires an extra power connector to suck up idle wattage. See if that board can run headless (no video card at all) and if so, do it.
The bottleneck in most file servers is the network connection, followed by the hard drive, then the RAM, then the CPU.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Assuming everything is gigabit (possible, but unlikely) you're moving into HDD-bottlenecking territory. I'm assuming that we're going to run into a 10/100 device on the network here so you're going to max that NIC at ~10MB/s and the harddrive is going to yawn and the CPU will wonder why you woke it from napping.
[edit] Also voting for Ubuntu. You could even do the Server install and then install Gnome or KDE on top of that once you're running. Speaking of... does anyone know of a good place to look at the differences between the Server and Desktop installs, or is it mostly just "the server install doesn't have a desktop"? In my mind I was thinking they'd probably be slightly different kernels maybe...
And I'm trying to save him money on power consumption by trimming totally unnecessary components. Seriously, that 6800XT will probably eat more power idling than my entire server setup.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
The server install installs the bare minimum for the distribution to function last I checked. The desktop install is like Windows from HP, lots of crap installed by default. You can easily install gnome on the server installs in Ubuntu, in fact, I recommend you take that route.
I'm guessing it's a gaming motherboard, so he's going to need something in there during setup because the motherboard won't have onboard graphics. Why waste money on a new one that consumes a little less if it's only for while he's doing setup? And can't you turn off the relevant hardware in the graphics card when you're not using it? In Linux, I mean.
1. That's assuming his motherboard will let him run headless - if not, he'll need SOMETHING.
2. Old PCI card - five bucks. Money saved by not running a card that eats 40-50W at idle = pays itself off in a month.
3. Yes, that's why there's a difference between "idle" and "load" consumption. They're both huge compared to a low-end card though.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I honestly don't think power will be a problem, the machine will not be running 100% of the time.
The motherboard does *not* have onboard graphics, I will probably pick up a cheapo PCI graphics card at First Saturday, if not trade.
S3 sleep mode is the idea here, I just want to make sure the OS can support that mode and waking up when I ping it.
I would like to keep a desktop interface for remote desktop purposes (in case I need to reorganize or something).
The motherboard is gigabit, and all the drives are SATA II. I have a decent RAID chip onboard but as I already have data on the drives, I'm leaving them as is.
Are your switch and other NICs also gigabit? If not, it's not going to help you having a GBe NIC on the server.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
No jumbo frame support, but it should still be better than standard 10/100. Should be all set then.
Now exploit that FiOS you just got! :winky:
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Basically the Linux geeks who boast about three years of uptime are generally running Debian.
You download like a 150MB ISO to burn to CD and then the packages are downloaded and installed from one of the APT mirrors during the install. It's nice if you need to get something running quickly.
I've had no trouble with up-time. In terms of years? Almost 2 now.
It's designed to be used for a fileserver. It only uses about 32MB of space, so you could get an IDE to CF adapter for $5-10 and keep your hard drives for just storage.
This looks promising. I knew there had to be a distro that operates like this, but I wasn't sure.
What I'm thinking about with this is using a 1GB thumb drive instead and booting to USB (easier to set up than a CF/IDE adapter. Think FreeNAS could do that? *edit* On second thought, I read the bottom post on their site, which says it will work on a USB drive.
However, since you wanted WoLAN, you might want to reconsider the FreeNAS thing. Since the BSD kernel in it hasn't been patched to account for it.
I have vague memories of cussing the fucker out when it wouldn't do what I want.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
This is something I can get behind. I will have to try this someday.
If you're in north america, I'll toss it in the mail, just PM me.
Damnit, I came here to post that.
Anyway, this is the best suggestion. It's extremely easy to use and set-up. I'm currently considering using FreeNAS for the next fileserver to be built at work. It has one flaw though, no UPS support. So if you're planning to use a UPS (which it doesn't appear to be) then you may want to look elsewhere.
I personally won't be implementing FreeNAS in a production environment until they get off their butts and implement apcupsd. It's not particularly hard to do either.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Personally I'd go the Ubuntu route, then at least you can use the machine for something else if you decide to take on another 'tinkering' project.
Tall-Paul MIPsDroid
They're working on it.
Essentially I think any linux distro is going to be find for your purposes, but I second the debian option, as it always struck me as more server centric then ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, I love ubuntu, but they often sacrifice stability for extra features. If your brave/geeky/got alot of free time, you could even try FreeBSD, some people swear by it.
If you interested in playing with distros, I recommend VirtualBox. It is free and allows you set up multiple OSes inside your host OS without fear of screwing things up. You can also do cool things like take snapshots of machine states and revert to it in case of mistakes, like accidentally messing up configuration files.
It cost me a total of like $15 for the drive enclosure (yay CompUSA dying) got everything else free.
My only gripe is serving music to my 360. Videos will maintain folder structure, music will not. wtf?
Even better, if I could just get Photoshop to run on Linux I'd be totally Windows-free. Do not suggest GIMP.
But I digress, my vote goes to ubuntu hardy server.
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
I would LIKE to use a UPS in the near future, but for now it's only on some Monster surge protectors ($29? No, I paid $7 each!)
You should be able to get CS2 going with WINE (as of the 1.0 release, anyway).
I was kind of surprised nobody mentioned Solaris. I'd love to get a ZFS pool happening one day.
Open filer is a pain in the arse for anything less than enterprise usage. It requires an external user / group store (like Active Directory or something) all you can do on a local level is allow access to everything for one user.
Tall-Paul MIPsDroid
It was an old Pentium Cerleron D and 768MB o' RAM and I rarely noticed a slowdown.
Ubuntu is probably your best choice for what you're doing at this stage. It's easy to setup, manage, and keep up to date. It's also not terribly difficult to run it from a USB flash drive which would give you you some extra storage space on your drives and let you easily recover later on if something goes terribly wrong. You can make a copy of your working Ubuntu image off the flash drive and just write it back on later.