Low end PC as home server, what package should I install?

[Neil]

On Feb 19, 2008 7:22 AM, David Vincent <dvincent at sleepdeprived.ca> wrote:
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> Raymond Lee wrote:
> > I have an IBM desktop PC (about Windows 98 2nd release(or whatever it
> > was called that started support USB devices) time frame). I have added
> > to a total of 192MB.
> >
> > I want to turn it into a home server for other machines (one Windows
> > Vista home basic, one Windows XP Pro) for access of multimedia data
> > (photos and music) by attaching an 80GB or 160GB PATA drives which are
> > dirt cheap now. Do you think it is a feasible solution? I think I'll
> > need Samba. Is it included in the desktop version or the server version
> > of Ubuntu? Considering the power of the system being on the low end,
> > should I do Xubuntu? If so, again, is Samba included?
>
> Many of us do exactly this.  I use the desktop version of Ubuntu and
> enable Remote Desktop so I can VNC in and use GUI tools.  I also install
> the OpenSSH Server so I can SSH in and do tasks via the command line if
> that is easier.
>
> > If this sounds ok, what about I move a step forward by installing a RAID
> > adapter and run disk mirroring? Are there any such adapters (PCI bus)
> > that are supported by Ubuntu?
>
> Ubuntu supports Linux RAID so you don't even need any special hardware
> to make a RAID array - it works with software only.  I've got a RAID-5
> made of three old 30gb drives.  It is really slow performance-wise but
> is more than I need for storage of OOo docs, PDFs, etc. etc.  (My media
> goes on a different server.)

Isn't this a little low speed for a software raid? Software raid is a
high resource hug as far as I know.

Neil

-- 
There are two kinds of people:
1. People who start their arrays with 1.
1. People who start their arrays with 0.