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

[David Vincent]

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Neil wrote:
> 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.)ID
> 
> Isn't this a little low speed for a software raid? Software raid is a
> high resource hug as far as I know.

Do you mean his proposed server-machine or my setup?

In regards to my setup - don't do this at work folks.

Yes, it is slow and low-speed.  They are IDE drives wuth ATA33
interfaces.  :)  Although, the machine has 1gb of RAM in it and never
touches its swap and more than keeps up with my 100mb LAN.  It started
as a project to familiarize myself with Linux software RAID and turned
into a file server.

In regards to his setup - it should be fine for home IMHO.  He might
want to go with Xubuntu due to the low RAM count, but then he'd have to
join a new mailing list for support.  :)

- -d
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