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

[Raymond CM Lee]

Thanks, guys. I think I had made the right choice of going this Ubuntu 
route. Your comments are very helpful. In summary, I think I'd do the 
following:
Install the standard desktop Ubuntu and once everything is set up 
(network, samba share, etc.), I'll switch off the GUI and make it boot 
up default to no GUI.

I think I'll put aside the idea of doing RAID (hard or soft) for the moment.

Raymond

Robert Sweetnam ??:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
> [mailto:ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Kent Borg
> Sent: 19 February 2008 20:03
> To: Ubuntu user technical support,not for general discussions
> Subject: Re: Low end PC as home server, what package should I install?
>
> NoOp wrote:
>   
>> Install the standard desktop version (Gnome/Ubuntu or KDE/Kubuntu -
>> whichever you are most familiar with).
>>   
>>     
>
> Alternatively, install a GUI version, but don't actually *run* the GUI 
> when you are not logged in doing maintenance. Even when not logged in 
> GDM will take a lot of RAM. 192 MB is a decent amount of RAM for running
>
> Samba, NFS, a lightly loaded web server, etc. But when running a GUI 192
>
> MB is only just maybe barely enough RAM.
>
> Agreed,
>
> If you only happen to have the install media for Ubuntu Desktop then by
> all means install what you need to. However it would be best to set your
> runlevel to 3 which is full multi-user with networking and some
> services.
>
> This will ensure that in the event of an unexpected reboot that your
> machine will boot up 'console only' i.e. no graphical display or window
> manager etc running in the background. It should also ensure that your
> network services such as Samba etc. will still run on booting.
>
> You can do this by the following steps:
>
> Make a backup of /etc/inittab
>
> Edit /etc/inittab and somewhere in the first 5 lines is an entry for the
> default runlevel. On my machine it looks like this:
>
> # The default runlevel.
> id:5:initdefault:
>
> To make runlevel 3 the default, change the 5 in the example above to 3.
>
> If access to X is needed then at a console on the physical machine you
> can simply enter the command:
>
> startx
>
> Provided X has been configured. Which is likely if you use the desktop
> distribution.
>
>
> Regards
> Robert 
>
>
>
>
>