Choosing an OS for my home File Server

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

I've been rather lucky with my eBay purchases this week. I got a stack
of used SCSI drives cheap, and the deal included a dead Adaptec 3400S
4-channel U160 RAID controller - which proved to be repairable. I also
bought a P3-S 1.4Ghz processor missing one pin for next to nothing and
repaired it.

These items complete the hardware I need to build a RAID file server for
my home network so I can avoid having to run regular backups of multiple
systems.

My first choice for file server operating system would be Solaris,
because it's free and I'm familiar with it, but no drivers are available
for the RAID controller. The supported choices would appear to be
Windows (easy but $$), freeBSD, or Linux (RedHat or SuSE).

I have no desire to spend significant amounts of time or money setting
up this file server, and would appreciate any recommendations from the
community regarding OS choice given my knowledge of Windows, Solaris,
and ...little else.

TIA

Sunny

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Sunny wrote:

>
> I have no desire to spend significant amounts of time or money setting
> up this file server, and would appreciate any recommendations from the
> community regarding OS choice given my knowledge of Windows, Solaris,
> and ...little else.
>


Well that limits your choices.. MS is significant amounts of money, Solaris
doesn't support your hardware and linux is going to take some time to setup
and understand how it works.

I'm not sure I'd consider a stack of used scsi drives hooked to a repaired
controller with a repaired CPU as reliable for backup use anyway! :-)
--

Stacey

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Sunny wrote:

>
>
> Stacey wrote:
>
>> Sunny wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I have no desire to spend significant amounts of time or money setting
>>> up this file server, and would appreciate any recommendations from the
>>> community regarding OS choice given my knowledge of Windows, Solaris,
>>> and ...little else.
>>>
>>
>> Well that limits your choices.. MS is significant amounts of money,
>> Solaris
>> doesn't support your hardware and linux is going to take some time to
>> setup
>> and understand how it works.
>
>
> So I should try FreeBSD?

FreeBSD is going to be no easier that Linux. In fact, it will probably
be a little more difficult.

If you want a quick way to try out Linux, burn a Knoppix CD. If you
like it, it can be installed to a hard drive easily. It's the fastest
way from zero-to-Linux.


-WD

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Sunny wrote:

>>
>> Well that limits your choices.. MS is significant amounts of money,
>> Solaris doesn't support your hardware and linux is going to take some
>> time to setup and understand how it works.
>
> So I should try FreeBSD?
>

That's going to be just as hard if not harder than linux to learn unless you
already know FreeBSD
--

Stacey

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:17:22 -0400, Sunny <sunny@nospam.net> wrote:
>I've been rather lucky with my eBay purchases this week. I got a stack
>of used SCSI drives cheap, and the deal included a dead Adaptec 3400S
>4-channel U160 RAID controller - which proved to be repairable. I also
>bought a P3-S 1.4Ghz processor missing one pin for next to nothing and
>repaired it.
>
>These items complete the hardware I need to build a RAID file server for
>my home network so I can avoid having to run regular backups of multiple
>systems.
>
>My first choice for file server operating system would be Solaris,
>because it's free and I'm familiar with it, but no drivers are available
>for the RAID controller. The supported choices would appear to be
>Windows (easy but $$), freeBSD, or Linux (RedHat or SuSE).
>
>I have no desire to spend significant amounts of time or money setting
>up this file server, and would appreciate any recommendations from the
>community regarding OS choice given my knowledge of Windows, Solaris,
>and ...little else.

Well the desire not to spend money kinda puts a downer on Windows,
though you should be able to get a (mostly) legal OEM copy of Win2K
Professional or WinXP Pro for not too much over $100 ($135 at NewEgg).
You need to buy some "hardware" with that, however most stores will
sell them to you with a $2 piece of hardware. Since it's only a home
server the 10-user limit of Win2K Pro/WinXP Pro probably aren't a big
issue, so you won't need to shell out the BIG $$$ for one of the
Microsoft Server products.


However, disregarding the Microsoft route, either Linux or FreeBSD
would probably be good choices, quite possibly even better choices for
you than MS. Since you already have a background in Unix-style
operating systems you've already got most of background sorted, so
neither one should be all that difficult to get going.

So, which do you chose? Tough call. I personally have a lot more
experience in Linux and feel much more comfortable in that
environment, however I have heard that FreeBSD is more closely related
to Solaris than Linux is. I have only very limited experience with
FreeBSD and virtually no experience with Solaris, so I can't say much
from personal experience, just a few off-hand comments I've heard over
the years. On the other hand, Linux support is a bit more extensive,
it's more widely used so it's almost certain that if you run into a
problem, someone else has encountered the same issue and probably
found a fix for it. In the end though, either one would probably be
good, as long as you're willing to spend a small amount of time
reading some simple install docs you should be set to go.

If you do decide on Linux, there is always the question of what
distribution to chose. I've NEVER liked Red Hat, any time I've ever
tried to use it I would get totally frustrated by it. On the other
hand, many other people swear by it. Long story short, there's a lot
of personal preference here. Personally my choice is Debian for
servers, however when you get right down to it, there aren't all that
many differences between the various distributions. Especially now
that all Linux distributions mostly comply with the Linux Standards
Base, the differences are often largely cosmetic and in the default
choice of tools installed. Someone else mentioned maybe throwing a
Knoppix CD together to try Linux out before you get your hands dirty
so to speak, not an entirely bad idea.

So, what do you get out of all of this? Out of the 4 possibilities
you mentioned, my recommendation would be SuSE Linux.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote in part:
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:17:22 -0400, Sunny <sunny@nospam.net> wrote:
>>My first choice for file server operating system would be Solaris,
>>because it's free and I'm familiar with it, but no drivers are available
>>for the RAID controller. The supported choices would appear to be
>>Windows (easy but $$), freeBSD, or Linux (RedHat or SuSE).
>>
>>I have no desire to spend significant amounts of time or money setting
>>up this file server, and would appreciate any recommendations from the
>>community regarding OS choice given my knowledge of Windows, Solaris,
>>and ...little else.
>
> So, which do you chose? Tough call. I personally have a lot more
> experience in Linux and feel much more comfortable in that
> environment, however I have heard that FreeBSD is more closely related
> to Solaris than Linux is. I have only very limited experience with
> FreeBSD and virtually no experience with Solaris, so I can't say much

Sorry to say this, but I think everyone is attacking this
problem from the wrong (OS) end. Small wonder, because the
thread is deeply OT.

People buy computers to solve problems and do work.
That depends first-and-formost on application software.
In this case, something to share files.

Assuming the OP doesn't want the MS-WinXP Pro route (which
is probably the easiest, but not necessarily the "best" )
then the critical software is SAMBA. She may also want OS
support to mount (say for backup) client disks.

AFAIK, SAMBA has been developed under Linux and works best
under it. Support for FreeBSD is probably good, followed at
some distance by Slowlaris.

The OS decision has to be taken in light of which runs SAMBA
best, and which features (such as `smbfs`) the OS offers for
reciprocal mounting (if needed).

In any case, the OP is either going to spend time or money.
Setting up SAMBA, especially the passwd files, isn't fun.

-- Robert

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 13:44:54 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

<snip>
>
>In any case, the OP is either going to spend time or money.
>Setting up SAMBA, especially the passwd files, isn't fun.
>

Doing the password files right is hard. Since the OP was asking for a
home file server, you don't have to do the password files right.

Setting up Samba for a home network is hard only if you try to set it
up as if you were trying to set up an enterprise server. Or, I should
say, I've had fewer problems and inexplicable/unfixable events with
Samba as a file Server than with any Windows box. All networking
problems are hard as far as I'm concerned, but steering somebody to
Windows so their life will be easy for networking is the strangest
post I've ever seen from you.

I've lost a battle or two with my computers, and especially with my
network, but Samba has never been the cause.

Sorry, after the latest round of *critical* XP patches, I now
sporadically and unpredictably lose network connectivity on my XP
_Professional_ box. Time for another reinstall. This will make,
what, ...oh, hell, I've lost count.

RM

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Robert Myers <rmyers@rustuck.com> wrote:
> problems are hard as far as I'm concerned, but steering somebody to
> Windows so their life will be easy for networking is the strangest
> post I've ever seen from you.

Touche' LOL! Actually, I steer people to MS-Windows all
the time. If they have very low expectations and no desire
to learn more, then MS-Windows is ideal. It certainly won't
exceed their expectations. It's very easy to learn simple
stuff at the cost of d@mn near impossible full sysadmin.

-- Robert

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Gary L. wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 13:44:54 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
> <redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Assuming the OP doesn't want the MS-WinXP Pro route (which
>>is probably the easiest, but not necessarily the "best" )
>>then the critical software is SAMBA. She may also want OS
>>support to mount (say for backup) client disks.
>>
>>AFAIK, SAMBA has been developed under Linux and works best
>>under it. Support for FreeBSD is probably good, followed at
>>some distance by Slowlaris.
>>
>>The OS decision has to be taken in light of which runs SAMBA
>>best, and which features (such as `smbfs`) the OS offers for
>>reciprocal mounting (if needed).
>>
>>In any case, the OP is either going to spend time or money.
>>Setting up SAMBA, especially the passwd files, isn't fun.
>
>
> The current releases of Red Hat and SuSE include graphical management
> tools for setting up Samba for file and printer sharing (as both host
> and client). A bit of fiddling may be required, but it isn't too hard.
>
> The real issue is whether the SCSI adapter is supported. If it is
> supported out of the box, then then setup should be easy. If it isn't
> supported, then installation will be a challenge.

Many thanks to all who responded.

I decided to try SuSE - setup couldn't have been easier, it recognised
all hardware without issues. I used YaST to set up Samba, the only thing
it didn't do was enable the SWAT administration tool - had to resort to
the command line for that.

No doubt I will need to do some tweaking, but my Windows clients can see
the Samba server and access a test share. Setup only took a couple of
hours, I doubt using Windows would have been much faster.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 15:29:04 -0400, Sunny <sunny@nospam.net> wrote:


>> The current releases of Red Hat and SuSE include graphical management
>> tools for setting up Samba for file and printer sharing (as both host
>> and client). A bit of fiddling may be required, but it isn't too hard.
>>
>> The real issue is whether the SCSI adapter is supported. If it is
>> supported out of the box, then then setup should be easy. If it isn't
>> supported, then installation will be a challenge.
>
>Many thanks to all who responded.
>
>I decided to try SuSE - setup couldn't have been easier, it recognised
>all hardware without issues. I used YaST to set up Samba, the only thing
>it didn't do was enable the SWAT administration tool - had to resort to
>the command line for that.
>
>No doubt I will need to do some tweaking, but my Windows clients can see
>the Samba server and access a test share. Setup only took a couple of
>hours, I doubt using Windows would have been much faster.

Glad that it worked out for you.
- -
Gary L.
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