Thinkpads Forum

Hey guys,

I just got a T60, which freed up my old Dell 600m for my wife to use. I have been thinking about having more backup than just USB flash drives. I have an old PC that I will either give to my niece, or turn into a server (why sell it for $150 or less, when you still have use for it, right?).

I've read through some posts here, about the pros and cons on NAS drives and servers, and it sounds like most everyone prefers the server solution.

I have never converted a PC into a server, and I am unsure as to how to proceed. I have looked in google and most answers were either incomplete, or overly complicated. I just want a drive to back up three computers: two laptops and a desktop, all connected to a wireless network. My needs/concerns are:

1. I don't need remote access to this server, just to backup my data.

2. How do I start? Do I erase XP home from it, and install something like NASLite, as someone suggested?

3. How do I go about installing security? Since this would be connected to my router, which is connected to the internet, I am concerned about this.

4. Is there anything else that I should know about?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

List out the specs of the machine. I have a similar setup with one of my computers that I could walk you through the process. I prefer Ubuntu for this type of thing, and it is extremely secure, while also not being too bad to setup if you can type a few things at a console. First step in this whole process is wiping the system and starting fresh with linux.

Email me at dietcokefiend@gmail.com, or shoot me an IM at volvo245se on aim.

my home server also has a little website up for stats on its current wellbeing and whatnot if you want to check it out.

http://dietcokefiend.homeip.net

Check out the APC and Sysinfo stuff.

The specs of the old PC are:

P4 2.4 ghz, 120 gb hdd (7200), 512 RAM, 10/100 NIC (it might have a gigabit card, but I can't remember right now). It has XP home installed.

Again, thanks for the help.

Oh those specs are perfect. For any large transfers I would really suggest getting a gigabit card for it, and going for an intel 1000 card. That might set you back ~35 bucks from an online source like newegg.com. Driver support is really nice on the intel cards in linux.

Did you have any plans on possibly sticking in another HD into the server for a bit more storage space? 320 gigs is about 90 bucks now.

This sounds really interesting, and the specs on my old desktop sounds very similar to the one rmendoza has. If it isn't too much hassle maybe you could post about the procedure in here? I'm not totally ready to make a server out of it yet, but once my girlfriend gets a laptop it might happen.

I am very interested in learning how to do this too - I have a old PC (P3 600 MHz, 512 MB RAM). I have a lot of experience worling in Linux, and would love to learn how to do this.

own6volvos wrote:Oh those specs are perfect. For any large transfers I would really suggest getting a gigabit card for it, and going for an intel 1000 card. That might set you back ~35 bucks from an online source like newegg.com. Driver support is really nice on the intel cards in linux.

Did you have any plans on possibly sticking in another HD into the server for a bit more storage space? 320 gigs is about 90 bucks now.

Interesting. I guess many would appreciate it if you could write a procedure.

I used to configure Linux servers with RedHat. Now with Ubuntu, I really donot want to spend the time learning all from the beginning again.

BTW, do you own 6 VOLVOS, as your id suggests?

If it is well done, perhaps the admins will decide to make a FAQ out of it. I make no promises though.

rmendoza wrote:The specs of the old PC are: P4 2.4 ghz, 120 gb hdd (7200), 512 RAM, 10/100 NIC (it might have a gigabit card, but I can't remember right now). It has XP home installed.

If all your access is by PCs that are behind your firewall, you could simply keep XP Home on this PC. It won't give you user-level security, but if you don't need that, and only have a handful of client PCs accessing it, you can get away without any reconfiguration or reinstall work -- simply share the directories that you want everyone to be able to access.

The upside is that if you are already using XP, you won't have a learning curve for running the "server".

P.S. A gigabit card for a home server only makes sense if you have the client PCs on wired gigabit Ethernet as well. If your clients are wireless, the 100Base-T wired Ethernet will more than keep up with that.

I guess it shouldn't be too hard making a walk through guide for this stuff. The basic rundown would be something like this

Pop in ubuntu "live" install disc
Click the install thing on the desktop
Give simple instructions on going through the prompts that come up
Explain how to work with a "console", primarity using the alt+ctrl+function keys to switch between then
Update the software
Install Samba
Setup samba login names same as your windows stuff
Then explain a few other programs like a webserver or ftp that a user might want to setup as well

I will grab one of my old machines and start with something fresh this weekend and write down the steps as I go. For the most part its almost as easy as installing windows. Just faster [/url]

own6volvos wrote:For the most part its almost as easy as installing windows. Just faster

But not faster than not installing Windows!

tomh009 wrote:

own6volvos wrote:For the most part its almost as easy as installing windows. Just faster

But not faster than not installing Windows!

Well technically the process of not installing Windows would extend until you DO install Windows. So, if you never install Windows, the process of not installing windows would be much greater than the process of installing windows.

I think you lost me there.

But my point was that since the OP already has XP on his PC, the least amount of effort is to leave XP on it, if it meets his/her requirements. Starting from scratch. regardless of the OS, will be more effort than simply sharing a few directories from the current OS.

tomh009 wrote:I think you lost me there.

But my point was that since the OP already has XP on his PC, the least amount of effort is to leave XP on it, if it meets his/her requirements. Starting from scratch. regardless of the OS, will be more effort than simply sharing a few directories from the current OS.

One of his concerns was Security, and his current setup is XP Home. Far from being a secure OS for home and internet shares. Linux/Unix is going to be much more hardened, and from disc insertion to finish takes about 30 minutes. It is really painless, and really worth it.