Questions for a Linux Based Home Server

[cozy4466]

To make it easy i have minimum experience with any linux flavor, i've used ubuntu ( minimum). I plan on making it a file server, but i may set it up as a firewall etc. My real question is how hard is it, any problems that i may run into, and what should i expect.

What flavor would be the best to learn on?

I do have have experience with server 2000/2003 but not dishing out money to run 4 home computers.....

i use vista on my main desktop, and have xp on the other 3.

I'm using an old p4 2.8, 2x1 Geil, 160gig HD. Mainly gonna be using it for my music, videos. So i'm not extremely worried if it fails, but more or less want to mess around with linux

Thanks!

[stocius]

To make it easy i have minimum experience with any linux flavor, i've used ubuntu ( minimum). I plan on making it a file server, but i may set it up as a firewall etc. My real question is how hard is it, any problems that i may run into, and what should i expect.

What flavor would be the best to learn on?

I do have have experience with server 2000/2003 but not dishing out money to run 4 home computers.....

i use vista on my main desktop, and have xp on the other 3.

I'm using an old p4 2.8, 2x1 Geil, 160gig HD. Mainly gonna be using it for my music, videos. So i'm not extremely worried if it fails, but more or less want to mess around with linux

Thanks!

it's easy, especially if you use ubuntu server edition. the most difficult part I had was getting Windows and Linux to play nice together, but maybe its easier on mac, never tried on a mac

[ARC1450]

Well, if it's just a plain file server, it should be just fine. I've never had any problems when doing the basics, only advanced stuff like trying to get Samba to act as a PDC for a Windows domain. That was just horrible.

[cozy4466]

It was easier than i thought it would be, now i'm just playing around with it.....set it up on an old dell laptop that i used for streaming music before, its working fine....i plan on playing around with different flavors, i used ubuntu server, (easier than loading windows)

Edit: Plan on putting it on the other computer but messing around with it on a laptop before hand

Thanks!

[ARC1450]

If you really want Samba to do some cool stuff, give this link a go: http://us1.samba.org/samba/

Check the manuals. There's some cool stuff, like setting up a "recycle bin" for your share, virus scanning. Decent stuff.

[p2501]

I don't know about XP, but there are NFS services for Vista, so maybe you want to look into setting up your server as an NFS one. Less secure, I know, but if it is only serving your own PC's then I would rather go the nfs way, cause there's less overhead with this method. I always got higher transfer rates with NFS. IF you want something tank-like for transfer, then look into AFS and encrypt everything on your server. Oh and btw, rather spend your time getting familiar with these different methods of setting up a file server on a system you sort of know already, instead of trying out different favour at the same time. So I would advice that you set up your server on Ubuntu, since you said you had some experience with it.

[enteon]

for setting up a firewall: either go the iptables way (CAN be secure as hell^^) or easier http://ipcop.org/
but i don't know how easy serving files is with this, just wanted to mention it.