I have an old PC that is only gathering dust in the attic, and now a perfect opportunity to convert it into a web server has arrived. As there is not going to be much 'serving' going on, I also think it might be a good idea to use it as a file server as well. System specs: CPU: Intel Pentium D 920 @ 2.8GHz MB: Asus P5LP-LE (don't bother looking for it on Asus website, it's not there) RAM: 1GB 133MHz *wince* HD: 320GB something... GPU: nVidia GeForce 6200SE PSU: Generic crap I did mention it was old, right? As I said, at the moment it is only gathering dust. I am thinking of installing Ubuntu Server or Desktop on it, then installing Apache and a file server (NAS). I have tried Ubuntu Server before, but I gave up on it when I ended up with a very limited command prompt. I have used Ubuntu Desktop many times before and use it on another PC in the house. Although as it is an old PC, the more performance squeezed out the better. In the future I plan to upgrade the entire thing, maybe starting with a new HD and moving on to a complete rebuild.
But if I want to run a web server on top of the file server, then FreeNAS will not be the best option.
Webmin is just a web-based interface to configure the server. I want to know what software to actually use to host a file server, and how to get it all set up on Ubuntu Server. Or another Unix based OS.
By webserver I assume you mean hosting websites, rather than files across the net? FreeNas is great for a NAS box and I believe it has FTP support so would be easy to access those files from anywhere. But I get the idea you want an actual web server to host sites, Ubuntu server or really any linux distro would do the job. You just need to setup/install Samba to deal with network shares to other machines to satisfy the NAS part of your requirements. Setup LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Php/Perl/Python), obviously by installing Ubuntu server you have already got the L part down, so you would just need to install the rest. This guide should see you right, it shows the install for various versions of Ubuntu, so would be good to read through first to make sure everything works in the one you chose. Edit: You don't necessarily have to install a server Linux, it will most likely be the desktop version with different apps installed and without a GUI. Once you have it setup, it might be nicer to have a desktop GUI to remote desktop into, but this will slightly increase the processing power required to run the machine.
Once Webmin is installed, it's point and click config for LAMP and loads more besides. You complained about using the CLI, I gave you an alternative. The list of modules can be found here, look under 'Servers'.
Thanks! A reply that doesn't just say - use FreeNAS. +Rep! Nice guide, will certainly help setting things up. And yes, by web server I did mean hosting web pages, not web file access. So Samba is all that is required for setting up file access? Or is it that Samba allows Windows to connect to Linux shares, whereas other Linux machines can connect to it anyway? Another problem is how to actually use Ubuntu Server. How can you run multiple things? Like multiple windows in a GUI environment. Also, +rep for Jake for suggesting Webmin.
Rob, samba is for sharing over a lan, usually with Windows PCs. However, it is so well-documented and supported that people tend to bend it to pretty much any sharing application. Apache is what you want to use by the sounds of it. The easiest thing to do IMO is to install Ubuntu Server (10.04 LTS), install Wemin and ubuntu-desktop. This way you can use webmin to do everything the easy way and, should that fail you, you have a workable desktop environment to work it out. Set everything to start at boot and then kill the GUI.
Well, any issues and there are the linux gurus here or the Ubuntu forums. A lot of us hang out in #ubuntu too. G'luck
Possibly the easiest way of setting up a server: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/lamp. Lightweight ubuntu based distro with preconfigured LAMP stack and webmin and phpMyAdmin. Just install Samba and you're away... feels a bit like cheating, but it works very well.
Already got Ubuntu server download started, and its too late (in the day) to start another one. And anyway, Linux is supposed to be about experimenting (and breaking, admittedly...) so starting off with something that is almost complete bad. Like someone has stolen the only thing that keeps me using Linux.
