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Re: [LUG] File Servers

 

>> Thanks for the replies. The network consists of one Fedora core 5 (pentium 4
>> 512 ram 8 gig hd) box, one Mac Powerbook Laptop (G4 1.5 gig ram), one Magnia
>> web server (headless and no keyboard/mouse) and one Windows 2 k (p3 450mhz,
>> 6.4 hd, 64 meg ram).

That 450Mhz P3 will be plenty.

>> I want to be able to share files and use a mirror raid and then 
>> overnight send
>> to a backup drive!

That's annoying me at the moment. Currently my server backs itself up on 
the other machines on the network. Really I want a local removable 
drive, but it needs to be hot pluggable and USB 1 is too slow. SATA and 
USB2 aren't really possible at the moment. If it's overnight then maybe 
USB 1 will be enough.

>> ...I have to admit I don't know whether the file server needs the power or
>> whether the workstations need the power!
The workstations, so long as it's a Linux server. Though RAM is always 
good for servers.

> If you don't need to use the Windows machine for anything other than 
> file serving then you wouldn't really need X Windows which would take 
> up extra valuable memory.  My file server is running Debian 3.1, but 
> I'd also suggest Ubuntu.

I decommissioned my 166Mhz P1 yesterday.  It only had 48Mb of EDO RAM 
(some of which was broken!). It served ftp, ssh, email, samba, nfs, 
apache, ntp, dns and dhcpd. It was the gateway to the internet and did 
all the firewalling. It served all the files for the entire network, and 
was regularly compiling (which took a while). Despite running all this, 
it was still perfectly fast enough to route internet games through it.

The only reason I upgraded it (other than the fact it was somewhat 
broken) was because Arch doesn't run on 586 and I needed USB.

For servers (and laptops and desktops and palmtops) I'd highly recommend 
Arch.

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