Linux Should I bother with this box?

Hi, probably been asked many times, sorry, please indulge me. I have access to an IBM eServer, x232 series that is being taken out of action. I can get it for really cheap ( as in $100US ) . It has a PIII 1.13G, 512M, 4 pcs 18G SCSI. I would like to set it up for the following: remote ( VPN? ) file access, local file sharing. The file sharing I realize is no problem, but I am wondering how "big" a distro I should install to do the remote work. It would be nice if I didn't have to do everything in a terminal when remote.

I looked around and couldn't put together much for a hundred bucks in "new-ish" parts, never mind storage. I just wondered if it is worth working with, given its price?

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

Do you want to run a FTP server? or what else do you mean by remote filesharing?

If just FTP server and samba, I'd see no reason why that hardware wouldn't do the job, unless you are planning to hammer it... What kind of a distro? Any will do that, but I'd go for Debian or the likes...

 

its not a half bad setup for the price (case looks quite good anyway!)

go for it for a 100dollars. theres a lot of distros out there that will do the job for you.just read around a little

answer to your question: it is worth working with (in my opinion)

 

Thanks for the input. My basis for comparison is another machine I have, running W2K Server, its a 1G Celeron, 1G ram and a single 20G SCSI. It handles about a dozen LAN telnet sessions to a database, light LAN filesharing, with one VPN connection. Since this Celeron box seems to cope, I figured the IBM would be a cheap way to get 4 times the SCSI storage and a similar Proc, albeit with less ram. just to add an 80G SCSI drive to the existing box will hit me for 200 dollars.

Glider: Basically I need to be able to VPN to the server, get a file, or place a file.
Over the LAN, there will be the usual file sharing.

Bixie 62: LOL, yeah, always liked the IBM server cases, they look battle ready, LOL. The thing weighs over 80 pounds. Add to that the technical info, drivers, manuals, etc that are available for IBM products, makes maintaining them easier.

The more I think about it, the more that I think this thing will be NAS, and will have some directories for files that users can VPN / FTP to and grab. The telnet stuff will likely stay on the Celery box, it took way to long to get smooth to move.

 

Well, I did get the server, it's in nice shape, even has the plastic protective film on the outer case, and the keys taped to the inside of the front door, right where IBM left them, LOL.

Have d/l 'd the setup software from IBM, ServerGuide, supposedly it helps with installing any of the approved OS's by providing drivers, and generally hand-holding I guess.

Let the fun begin!

 

Keep us informed...

 

Just my $0.02, if you are going with filesharing, I prefer installing an ssh server rather than FTP, then use winSCP to move files back and forth in windows.

If you have another linux box running gnome, you can just "connect to" the server and browse it like you would any other folder.

If you want to mount a drive in windows, I think samba can take care of this, but I've never tried.

And yes, VNC does work, or if you get comfy with the command line, you can just SSH in.

I like ubuntu myself, but you may just want to use straight debian if you aren't going to use the interface on a regular basis. But just about any distro would work. I've used slackware for similar stuff, and gentoo would work nicely too. (but gentoo takes forever to install *hides from glider*)

 

Yeah, and it's more secure, certainly if you are going to "copy" over the big bad internet...

Yeah, Samba is easy to set up (1 config file) and does exactly this... There are plenty of guides around...

Or do like me... Make a SSH tunnel and VNC through that... Secure + GUI

Don't try to hide... I'll hunt you down and make you sit through a Stage 1 compilation on a 386, with all the ram removed No, What you say is true if you see it in it's context. A decent Gentoo "install" takes longer than your average Ubuntu or Debian, but if you've done it 2 times you'll fly through. 3 hours, getting the base installed & configured on my lappy. 3 hours isn't that much to me, and if you think about the control, speed, 1337-ness and power you get back, it's well worth it...

 

Well, some fiddling about has happened, not all of it productive. To be frank, most of it was decidely unproductive.

The serverguide CD was a waste of a perfectly good CDR, unless I get a Windows product. Must read product descriptions more carefully.

Have tried Fedora Core5, too much bulk, had to go. Got SUSE 10.1 in Linux Format magazine, 3 attempts and all failed at various points of installation. High hopes ended in many bad words, maligning of various people I don't know, general state of displeasure endured by all members of the household.

Next big event was to d/l CentOS 4.3 single server CD. RH enterprise pared down to a single disc. Terminal of course. I figure since I'm going to be running the show remotely in terminal anyways, might as well suck it up and brush-off the bash skills.

On my last box I did everything from my windows machine using Putty, now it's looking deja-vu all over again.

phew, that feels better, thanks for listening, LOL

OneSeventeen: I agree, SSH and using VNC or VPN tunnels will likely be the remote option. Samba will take care of the local needs. Will check out winSCP, reminds me of WS_FTP.

Glider: I am going to grab Ubuntu 6.06.1 server, more options are always good.

Has anyone used the CentOS single server package? Or the Ubuntu one? How do they perform overall?

Thanks for the input!

 

Want small and powerfull... go Gentoo [You could see this coming from miles away ]

 

I now run Arch linux, it's as small and powerful as Gentoo, but maintainance is far far shorter, and it doesn't **** up nearly as much.
And no lengthy compilation times either, I recommend it.

 

Now where's the fun in that Ramble?

 

arch is the one i would like to try
mandrake 9 (i think) is the only linux i've used so far
but hey i'm learning
later

 

I haven't tried Ubuntu 6.06 server, but I'm going to be upgrading an existing server to it over the weekend (26 August, 2006), so I'll post any notes in this thread once I've done that.

I plan to just do a dist-upgrade, but I don't generally trust those, so I may wind up just backing up important config files and web sites (not to mention a single backup of the whole server, just in case) then format and start from scratch, but I'm really hoping to avoid that!

I hear gentoo is great for command line stuff, which would make for a good filesharing server if you don't want a GUI... I keep saying "if you don't want a GUI" because I've found when you are forced to use the command line for network servers, you have a better idea of how it works, and it generally works better and faster. Do a stage 1 gentoo and you will REALLY understand what's going on, IMO. (just don't plan on sitting and watching the download/compile/install process... just rent a couple of movies, and do it in the afternoon so you can leave it to compile overnight )

 

Tried the Ubuntu server CD. Did go pretty quick, but I am not all that impressed with the way it handled the disk partitioning. Kinda confusing/catch22 if you know what I mean. It offers to do it for you but if the drive(s) are not blank it tries to use free space, and mucks it up IMHO. If you choose to "free-space" it will, but then has a clumsy way of manually partitioning. Maybe it was just me.

Also somehow it finished the install without setting a root password. Made shutting down a bit fun. Luckily (?) I could Ctl-Alt-Del from user and catch the recover option on the restart then shutdown, since it roots you in recovery mode. Now that I think about that, maybe this is not so good security wise...hmmmm....

 

Ubuntu doesnt have a root account enabled. To do any thing you just have to precede the command with sudo- for example

Code:

sudo shutdown -r now

took me a while to get used to sudo but now i quite like it.

 

Code:

sudo su -
passwd

and from then on:

Code:

su -

for root

That is one of the most sucky things about Ubuntu (for me)... That and in a graphical environment some thing have to be done through the point and click interface (if you don't believe me, try

Code:

loadkeys be-latin1

, normally it sets the keyboard layout to Belgian AZERTY (like I have), well in Ubuntu that doesn't work)

And don't use shutdown... get used to runlevels init 0 for shutdown, init 6 for reboot... Much easier (for me)

EDIT: 1:17, You know the Gentoo Stage 1 install is actually not recommended by the developers? And Stage 2 neither... And TBH, it isn't worth the wile (& the time)... Stage 3 will give you plenty of options for tweaks...

EDIT2: now that I'm at it... If you ever forget to set a root password (I did it once :s) you have 2 options on boot:
1) in Grub, edit the boot options and add "single" to the boot options. That makes you boot into single user mode, as root. A simple passwd will set your root password (that's why physical acces to a server is so dangerous)
2) just boot from a recovery cd, chroot into the current install (first mount the HD's off course) and "passwd" again...

 

Well that explains that, LOL.


Glider: I was a bit worried I had bricked it with Ubuntu, so I was trying to get out clean and start over. That is when the fun started. Of course everything from init to every other way I could think of to get su or get rooted or just plain halting was met with " you need to be root" or "you can't do that." I was getting a little frustrated, and eventually did pretty much as you suggested.

Since I always use the same root password and the same first user and user password on any new installation, and change them later, I second guessed myself as to wether Ubuntu hasd actually set up root. If you try to root it all seems normal, other than it doesn't like the password.

 

OK, well I think I figured out what was up with the partitioning bit in Ubuntu, it was me having a "dopey-moment." Sorta did a deer in the headlights routine.

If I may, what would you people suggest as a good partition arrangement for this machine, having 4 SCSI drives, 18G each. Should I keep it all on one drive, or put the swap on a separate drive? Or do I just let it treat it as one continous space?

 

My partitioning sceme (which works good, but might improve) is:

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1          21      160650   83  Linux [b]=> /boot[/b]
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda2   *          21        1677    13309821    7  HPFS/NTFS [b]=> Windows[/b]
/dev/hda3            1678        4864    25599577+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) [b]=> start of logical volume[/b]
/dev/hda5            1678        1808     1052226   82  Linux swap / Solaris [b]=> swap[/b]
/dev/hda6            1809        2781     7815591   83  Linux [b]=> /[/b]
/dev/hda7            2782        4864    16731666   83  Linux [b]=> /home[/b]

The improvments would be ditching Windows which is on my todo list and making / a bit bigger.

Separate /home! if your system crashes you won't lose your documents... And /boot, is it doesn't boot anymore, documents and systems are both saved...