Linux Fileserver

[Ian Rose]

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Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Wes Hegge wrote:
>> Sure.  A file server in Linux is not much different from a desktop, except
>> that usually there is no gui loaded.  This means you may want to learn the
>> command line functions to burn an ISO
>
> Which are not that hard.  Search for cdrecord .   However, you *can* run
> a file server in addition to a GUI.  You'll have a performance loss, but
> it's probably doable unless these computers are very old.
>
> Matt Flaschen
>
>> On 3/17/07, Harold Hartley <haroldh at midmaine.com> wrote:
>>> I have plans to convert my old desktop PC's to fileservers and use my
>>> laptop as my daily computer on my network.
>>> When I setup fileservers on my desktop PC's, will I still be able to
>>> burn .ISO images to cd even though I will be running a fileserver on the
>>> PC.
>>>
>>> Harold
>>>
As an indication, my server box is a (middle-aged!) Athlon 2000+ with
512MB ram - it runs NFS and Samba (Windows) fileservers for all my
music and video, a webserver, contains a DVB-T card and functions as
our household tv (including recording), runs a mailserver with IMAP,
generally has two our three users permanently logged in to standard
KDE desktop sessions simultaneously. As a low-priority background job
it frequently is re-encoding stored tv programmes to preserve storage
space...

...And *still* has no problem playing UT2004 at the same time. With
frame rates 5%-10% higher than I ever got with this machines in Windows.

I also run a Samba server on my laptop (800Mhz P3 / 386 MB RAM) with
KDE, which works at acceptable levels of performance - the fileserver
part runs flawlessly, with the GUI being a bit slow, but perfectly usable.

There *is* a small performance hit running a GUI on a fileserver, but
in my limited experience on a home network, as long as there is a
reasonable amount of RAM, the CPU is idle most of the time (unless
transcoding video or playing games!), and linux handles complex
workloads with competence. In Windows you frequently get the feeling
that it just doesn't like doing too many things at once. Linux just
doesn't seem to suffer from this to the same extent.

It is also possible to run individual graphical programs remotely (say
from your laptop) - in which case the GUI is handled by the laptop not
the server PC.

In your case (depending on hardware, obviously), I would *try* running
a GUI, as it increases the ease-of-use for the cd-burning case you
mention - even if it is a little too much, you can easily go between
GUI and non-GUI levels without difficulty, and on a fileserving PC the
extra hard disk space for GUI components wouldn't be noticed. Perhaps
if you indicate the processor/RAM on your target PC, people could give
an opinion on how suitable it is for the role you are considering.

hth

Ian
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