# A good OS for a home server?



## Honzo

Hey everyone!

I decided to utilize some old hardware laying around my house and I'd like to use it to put together a small file server for my house.  I have multiple computers so I think it'd be much nicer if I had a central location to store things like media and important data files (like quicken databases) so I can access and edit them via all my other computers.

The Server:
The hardware i'm using for the server is basically an old soyo barebones computer running an amd athlon 1500 (1.5 ghz solo core) processor with 2x 80gb ide drives running on the onboard ide controller.  Like i said, old hardware lol.

The Clients:
Three particular computers I would like to access the files with are an EEE netbook running xp, my imac running snow leopard, and an older mac mini I will hook up to my entertainment center to stream media.

What the server needs to be capable of:
Well really the only requirement is file storage.  It needs to be capable of read/write access from both windows and mac operating systems.  A couple other features I'd like though are specific user file access, internet access, and software raid.  I like the feature on windows machines where, depending on who remotely logs onto the computer, the files that are readable and writable are different.  For example, I'd like to allow my brother and his girlfriend to access the server so we could all share an itunes library and movie collection, but I don't want them to have access to my quicken data and I want them to be allowed such privacy as well.  Internet access is less important, but it would be nice to be able to access the files anywhere via internet since the computer will be always on and always connected.  And finally, software raid, or at least what I think is raid lol.  Its not necessary but it would be nice if all drives appeared as a single drive.  The catch though is that I would like to have the option to add drives as I aquire them and have it increase that singular drives capacity.  I don't even know if this is possible but I figure I'd at least ask  .  I plan on adding pci sata or ide controllers since I come into possession of hard drives out of nowhere for some reason lol...

anyway, the big question: what operating system and software is the best for accomplishing the most of this criteria?  I appreciate any help anyone can give me! I just don't want to waste the time loading os'es on the computer only to find out they can't accomplish what I want them to


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## zombine210

i'm using windows 2003 server for file sharing on the P3. i have a softraid card with only one 1tb drive  for the moment.

it works pretty good, i can set per user or group permissions.

however internet access is very restricted, so i can't search for solutions whenever i'm working on it. you have to 'allow' every website you trust.

also, you can't use any old antivirus, it has to be a server version; i'm using something called clam antivirus because it's free.

i'm considering using windows XP though. it works about the same and i only have 5 users including myself, so i'm well under the 10 connection limit. and i can use avg or any of the free antivirus and anti malwares.

i tried linux but could never get the raid drivers to load... i guess it depends what card you're using, mine is a rosewill rc-209-ex i think; pci to sata 1.5. ymmv.


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## voyagerfan99

Windows Home Server is a great server OS for a great price.

More info on the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_home_server


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## lucasbytegenius

FreeNAS is for you, as you have an old machine and all you plan to do with it is make a file server. Runs great, I set up an old computer I had laying around with a 80 GB HD so I could put all my stupid seldom used CD images that I make of every darn CD I get .


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## zombine210

lucasbytegenius said:


> FreeNAS is for you, as you have an old machine and all you plan to do with it is make a file server. Runs great, I set up an old computer I had laying around with a 80 GB HD so I could put all my stupid seldom used CD images that I make of every darn CD I get .



sounds good on paper, but i couldn't get the raid card to work with freenas.

also, im running fairly old hardware and in case if failure i can take my ntfs drives an plug them into any of my other windows machines and recover my data quickly. don't feel like messing with 'nix to recover a ufs drive.

also, didn't see my second nic. wanted another set of drivers, nics are identical


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## lucasbytegenius

FreeNAS works with NTFS.


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## Honzo

Thanks for all the comments guys! I'm going to start with FreeNAS first since its free, but I'll try server 2003, home server, and just xp pro if i can't get FreeNAS to do what I want.  Thanks again!


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## tlarkin

the small business license for Win2k3 server starts at $1k....

Why not just use Linux which is free?


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## sometechieguy

Yeah, Ubuntu Server should be easy to work with. Slackware's not bad. CentOS if you're serious or FreeBSD. OpenBSD if you're feeling sadistic.

There even used to be a server optimized version of linux called SOL.  Server optimized Linux.


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## zombine210

tlarkin said:


> the small business license for Win2k3 server starts at $1k....
> 
> Why not just use Linux which is free?



if you're a student you can get it free from ms dreamspark; which is where i got my copy.

but, i would try ubuntu or red hat server before freenas.


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## tlarkin

zombine210 said:


> if you're a student you can get it free from ms dreamspark; which is where i got my copy.
> 
> but, i would try ubuntu or red hat server before freenas.



Only if your school/university has that license agreement with Microsoft.   It is some special program that Universities pay for, to enable their students to get highly discounted copies of MS products.


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## Honzo

couldn't even get through the setup of FreeNAS lol.  I couldn't get it to configure with my network for me to have access to the WebGUI. I had an extra license of XP Pro laying around I want to try since I read an article about using Dynamic Discs to do a software raid setup which looked appealing.  Does anyone know if this is done, can you add more drives to the one dynamic disc at a later date?  If I can't get XP to do what I'd like after installing a few programs and such to allow better access and management, I guess I'll try Ubuntu or Red Hat.  Luckily I don't have a time crunch at all, this is just a side project I'm doing for fun to take up some time


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## Camper

I would install the Linux flavor of your choice and go to http://www.howtoforge.com and find the howto Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend for that distro. Vary easy setup and it not hard on the older systems. I would suggest using Fedora or Ubuntu.


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## tlarkin

Camper said:


> I would install the Linux flavor of your choice and go to http://www.howtoforge.com and find the howto Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend for that distro. Vary easy setup and it not hard on the older systems. I would suggest using Fedora or Ubuntu.



+1 gonna agree with this


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## lucasbytegenius

Honzo said:


> c*ouldn't even get through the setup of FreeNAS lol*.  I couldn't get it to configure with my network for me to have access to the WebGUI. I had an extra license of XP Pro laying around I want to try since I read an article about using Dynamic Discs to do a software raid setup which looked appealing.  Does anyone know if this is done, can you add more drives to the one dynamic disc at a later date?  If I can't get XP to do what I'd like after installing a few programs and such to allow better access and management, I guess I'll try Ubuntu or Red Hat.  Luckily I don't have a time crunch at all, this is just a side project I'm doing for fun to take up some time



I have trouble with older computers, but how old is yours? I had no problems. PCW recommended it, too. That's where I heard of it.


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## Honzo

lucasbytegenius said:


> I have trouble with older computers, but how old is yours? I had no problems. PCW recommended it, too. That's where I heard of it.



lemme put it this way, the amd athlon 1500+ is the fastest processor this computer can handle lol. I'd say just around the 10 year mark. But the OS installed just fine. When it came to the networking was my issue. The default 192.168.1.250 wouldn't bring up the webgui so I tried to let it auto configuration but it would set the ip to 0.0.0.0 :/ Unfortunately, my service provider is AT&T uverse so I'm not really able to tinker with the dhcp since it's a router/wap/modem


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