Networking/File Server Questions

[Sean]

Soo...

I have my gaming PC which holds most of my music, anime, ect ect.

I have my laptop w/ HDMI output and wireless network connection.

I have my 56" Samsung DLP HDTV w/ HDMI Inputs and is just plain fun to watch anime on.

I hate leaving my gaming PC on for hours at a time and making it double as my "file server" to share videos and music over my network to my laptop so I can watch them on my TV, or listen to music in my living room from my PC, ect ect.

So I want to build a file server that uses low power, requires little resources, and costs relatively little, and is something I wouldn't mind leaving on for days at a time. I've found some barebones systems on newegg that fit this quite nicely, however, I don't want to purchase another copy of Windows XP (or god forbid Vista) so I'm wanting to install some sort of Linux OS on it.

I don't know shit about networking through Linux, or if Linux and Windows will talk to each other properly to let me access drives on the Linux system from the Windows computers in my house. I also don't know if, later on when I upgrade, if Linux would let me RAID two SATA HDDs.

So is there anyone out there who runs a dedicated file server in their house that has some tips to share?

[Sarah]

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu Downloads, documentation, and forums- great community with loads of support.

I would recommend trying Ubuntu 8.04, as Ubuntu is a fairly user friendly Linux distro, with an easy package manager. There is a server edition available, but installing the desktop system (Gnome by default) and all other things needed upon installation are all done through the command line, which may seem very daunting and convoluted for your first install. I believe the desktop edition has a GUI installer. I, personally, have only used the server edition.

Once you have that installed, you'll need to install Samba and edit some configuration files.

Let me know when you get to that point, and I'll attempt to walk you through it. It's a bit of a pain, with a lot of tweaking, but it's very doable. IM me or post here. I will probably be in lala land at either place. (If you know how I am.) I'll try my best to check back in often.

EDIT: Here's a small suggestion. You could use the file server as a media box, as well, and connect it directly to your TV and sound system. I've done that in the past and will be doing it in the near future, whenever I can afford to put another box together.

Recommended programs:
Video player - mplayer
Music player - exaile (last.fm support), xmms
Wine - Windows implementation system. Can run some Windows programs. (However, Wine Is Not an Emulator. Just like GNU is Not Unix. {geek moment})
Mp3/Ogg tagger - Audio Tag Tool
Useful image viewer- kuickshow (great for manga, scroll wheel allows progression to next image, better than click, back, click)

[Furore]

Cheaper file server?

I'm not really a big fan of it personally, but I have a mate who swears by FreeBSD. The site's here: The FreeBSD Project

From what I remember him telling me, it's pretty much the most stable OS in terms of web servers with the longest uptime. And I'm pretty sure it's similar to Linux as my mate spends some time playing Quake 4 and Wolfenstein on it and both are Linux versions.

Linux and Samba are very good together though. I haven't used them for a file server as I actually prefer having a cheaper desktop dedicated to being an offline workstation (I'd use Linux exclusively, but unfortunately it seems to hate many PC games with a passion, and I lack the hardware to make the pursuit of emulation feasible. WINE's a beautiful creature, though it's still far from perfect...). I'm a big fan of openSUSE as a distro, as I love the look (even if it can drain resources), but I've played around with a fair few distros... Ubuntu wasn't exactly a favourite I held. Debian I likes though. I keep going back to it every so often.

I think the best thing to do is really play around, decide what you like after sampling a dozen. If they're all free, you have very little to lose, right?

[Sarah]

FreeBSD is decent, but it might be a bit too much for someone that is just getting into a Unix based OS's. I recommended Ubuntu because I've seen what happens when newbies try to switch over to Unix based OS's that are a little difficult. They tend to give up and stick with Windows, unfortunately. People don't like difficult things. Not normal people, at least.

Ubuntu is Debian based, so in essence, Ubuntu is Debian. It uses the same package manager, the same core commands and the same kernel - Linux. You don't have to use the desktop system recommended. You could use Blackbox, KDE, Fluxbox- whatever strikes your fancy. For example, you could have a box with Debian as the OS and Blackbox as the desktop, and another box with Ubuntu as the OS and Blackbox as the desktop. They would operate essentially the same way.

The whole reason that I keep recommending Ubuntu to new users is due to the fact that there is an enormous community about it. People are willing to help you out, no matter how stupid you may think your question is. That attitude isn't so common among users of other distributions. There is also the fact that there is long term support for Ubuntu. They plan to keep this distribution going for quite a while.

After learning with Ubuntu, I absolutely recommend... no wait- command, that other distributions are tried out. By then, you'll be much more used to using the command line, and transitioning to different package managers and such won't be quite so difficult. The introduction of more prevalent package dependencies won't be quite so scary once you can work your way around the command line.

Now, please don't think that I'm a one distribution lady. Ubuntu is nice. I'm using it right now, just because I want to be a bit more familiar with Debian based distros, for when I take my test. I have a tendency to like Gentoo, which is a distro of Linux with a package manager similar to BSD. However, in order to keep your system up to date with Gentoo, you have to have an almost abnormal obsession with your computer. It is a lot of work compared to other distributions- very minimalistic with extremely high customability.

I've also used Red Hat, Fedora Core, Mandrake, and NetBSD. They're okay, but nothing that really popped with me.


Heh, for all we know, Sean got sick of waiting and did his own thing by now, anyhow.