[ubuntu-uk] Windows Home Server

[Rob Beard]

Alan Pope wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 20:09 +0100, Alec Wright wrote:
>> On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 20:03 +0100, Daniel Lamb wrote:
>>> Could Ubuntu not develop a more user friendly home server ie just with samba
>>> and maybe amanada or bacula for backups? Not all the extras.
>> What I think would be great is if the server just sits there, being
>> serverish, but you have a graphical manager for almost everything (HTTP,
>> FTP, SAMBA, DHCP, netboot etc), but this isn't run on the server. It's
>> run on a client, and this administrator communicates with the server,
>> sending simple commands, perhaps hell commands over SSH.
>>
>> Comments?
>> If people like it, I'll make an LP blueprint.
> 
> Pretty much already done:-
> 
> https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntu-easy-business-server
> https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ebox
> 
> :)
> 
> The plan is for Ubuntu to release a server product which achieves many
> of the goals for a small office / home office product, with an easy to
> use admin tool.
> 
> Cheers,
> Al.
> 

The Ubuntu Easy Business Server sounds good.  One of my servers (mail 
server running on VMWare on Ubuntu Server) is running SME Server 
(www.smeserver.org / www.contribs.org) which when I first started using 
it did everything I needed it to (mail server with webmail/imap mail, 
Samba file sharing to Windows machines / XBOX, printer sharing, proxy 
server to share internet access).  I've found two things that really get 
on my nerves - one it's based on CentOS which although isn't a major 
thing, I really can't get on well with YUM (or anything based on RPM), 
and secondly it generally needs a reboot every time it has an update (it 
updates itself in the background but won't reboot itself and sometimes 
this causes big problems with the web interface etc).

Now this Ubuntu server sounds like the sort of thing I'd certainly want 
to migrate to.

I've spoken to a couple of people before who have expressed an interest 
in a PC which could be used to store media etc, one guy at work for 
instance wanted a box which he could put under the stairs, connect up a 
250GB external USB hard drive and be able to access it from his laptop 
and store pictures, music and video on it and maybe password protect 
bits of it, where as someone like my dad would like to have a machine 
which he can store his business e-mails/documents on and access them on 
his laptop when he's away (over the internet).

Rob