given free P3 mach, thinking of running a small server

[mmills]

a buddie of mine got a new pc a couple of weeks ago and he is gonna give me his old P3 win98 machine, the hard drive is like a 10 gig and it has 64mb of ram, I have a 64 stick so that will take it up to 128, I want to host all my music on my network from this machine, plus I want to host my family website from there, anyone have any suggestions for a light but non complicated distro to install, and please no slackware suggestions, I tried to install 9.1 and got irritated and reformatted back to mandrake ( I havent used mandrake since 9.0 went out of style). I was thinking mabye debian 3.1rOa.......

[IsaacKuo]

Just use whatever linux distribution you're already familiar with.

I'd personally put Debian 3.1 on it, but of course I use Debian 3.1 on ALL of my computers. Three of them are Pentium III machines, actually. With them, I find that 128megs of RAM runs KDE tolerably, but IceWM is much slicker. Of course, for a file/web server there's no particular reason to run a GUI at all.

Debian Stable is nice for a no-nonsense server installation. Note that there's a certain "Debian way" of doing things, so you'll want to check out some Debian specific documentation on how to set up server software (there's plenty of good online Debian documentation).

[mmills]

I have been using ubuntu 4.10, 5.04 and 5.10, I understand the debian concept, but running without a gui, yeah I will need a detailed how-to to do that one, I have used blackbox and so forth ( not much ) but no GUI? eh, yeah might need some help there.

mmills

[labwerx]

Go with a newer version of Mandrake.

I have a box at home that runs 10.1 on a P2-266 and I find it to be quite nice. My linux server runs Mandrake 9.2 with only a Pentium Pro 200/1M and 288MB of RAM (though I do have a pair of 9GB UWSCSI drives and a 2GB SCSI drive in it). I use the server for web, ftp, samba, and as a proxy for my kids to go through to the web (can't monitor their activity enough!). All you need to do is take the time to go through the installer and weed out the packages you don't need and turn off unnecessary services.

[dkeav]

server tends to be a light weight install, no need to waste resources on things not related to serving your content

any distro would work here, just a matter of design and where you really want to go, if your familiar with ubuntu/debian then that would be a very good choice, you can install X if you need, but it is by no means required or even suggested on a server, you might want to choose light weight processes too, for example if your webpage is static content or just not very complex try lighttpd or thttpd instead of that big ol apache

[Calipso]

you could try Ubuntu Server (http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/5.10/)

[mmills]

nice, what I have done so far is I installed ubuntu 5.10 and I weeded out games/sounds and audio/office and a few other applications and I made the gnome non icon version, running samba to serve the network for music, but I would really like to figure out how to do this with no GUI, I found out the system specs better when I cracked the case, 650mhz AMD 64 pc100, I added a 32mb stick and a 40 gig hard drive, that replaced the 10gig. I will be getting a 64 stick from a relative today. right now it runs smooth, but I would like to be able to lighten things up. I think removing the gui would help alot, except I will have to figure out samba a little more before I try that, atleast for now it is stable. I will download the ubuntu server and try it out on a spare laptop to see what the major difference is.

matt

[soulestream]

you could just setup the system, then remove un-needed services, then just set the boot mode to init3. that way X does not load. 5.10 seems to have alot of stuff running so check services well.

I use Slackware for mine :p (i read the first post) but,

its a PII 450 with 192MB RAM
60 GB
160 GB
250 GB - External
I use Samba for files (windows and linux environment)

IPP for printing. Windows and Linux both support IPP well, plus you can login to cups via webmin from any machine. Gives you nice easy control to print spool, adding printers, etc

The only issue with leaving X installed is disk space.

soule

[dkeav]

you notice when you bootup ubuntu cd for install it should list its boot options for the debian installer (server) is listed and only installs the base system ie no gui, maybe you should try that before wasting your time downloading a whole new iso

[mmills]

you could try Ubuntu Server (http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/5.10/)

Ok, well I Installed ubuntu server and I like it so far, but since I have never done anything without a gui im in a bit of trouble right now, I installed it, did my updates and upgrades, installed the packages I did prior samba and smb and I have my network users onboard, but I cant do this from the terminal without gedit.............

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.confFind this line
...
; security = user
...Replace with the following lines
security = user
username map = /etc/samba/smbusersFind this section
...
# By default, the home directories are exported read-only. Change next
# parameter to 'yes' if you want to be able to write to them.
writable = no
...Replace with the following lines
# By default, the home directories are exported read-only. Change next
# parameter to 'yes' if you want to be able to write to them.
writable = yes

matt

[mmills]

I reset everything the way I had it running before, I will do everything through the gui without gedit, then once I know that I will be able to do it without the gui, I will swap out systems.

please keep the helpfull comments comming.

matt

[soulestream]

if you are saying you dont know how to edit a file from cli

learn one or more

VI
VIM
emacs
nano

soule

[mmills]

Im not sure what you mean, what I need to figure out is how to edit a source file from a terminal since I wont be running a gui. right now I have 155mb of ram and I am running at 66% on my ram only 4% CPU.

so if I can figure out how to do everything through a terminal (NO GUI) then I will be able to lighten everything up, now I uninstall 75% of gnome, if I install openbox and run that instead will all my home files be the same or will I have to recreate everything in openbox as in samba shared folders and such?

matt

[soulestream]

then you edit the file by using (in terminal)

vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

or

emacs /etc/samba/smb.conf

or

nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

you probably wanna read the man page for the program you use cause you can do some bad stuff if you dont know what you are doing

soule

[dkeav]

how did we ever get along prior to the GUI and mouse :p

[aNoob]

What's wrong with Slack?
My server (http://epuras.dyndns.org) at home is running Slack 10.2 , set up without any problem in about 2 hours. I tryed FC3 but I suck major time when is about rpm. I preffer configurmakemakeinstall and doing the kernel dance once in a while. It makes me feel important and I can impress the kids in the neighborhood.

[mmills]

the only thing wrong with your server is that is is missing some dust covers :D. I always wanted to try out slack but for some reason I cant break past the partition section, or my partition gets screwed up and it installs and wont run. So I use a debian distro, becuse I understand it better. that and netbsd, ive always wanted to try out netbsd

[aNoob]

Check Files section. I am working to make a whole story on how I installed my box :D

Yes, I am missing those damn floppy size covers in the front but I just remembered that I have another case. Which is a goood exercise. Again :D

[mmills]

yeah I dunno Im gonna check out a deb distro puredebian, Im gonna test run it on a p3 hp laptop.

I would have to sit down and learn how to make directories and untar files and so forth, I have been babied by dpkg,apt-get install and so on

[aNoob]

That's good, use what you feel is good for you. Especially that you already tried Slack. I, for one, don't know why the heck I always come back to slack. Is like a drug.

[mmills]

the part that really sucks is that both prior and current kernel dislike my laptop, so I had to give all rights to my wife and format it with xp. Im in the process of building a machine for debian, currently all I need is a AMD XP CPU, 1 cdrom, Case and Power Supply, Audio Card Optional, I have everything else purchased or was given to me. 128mb Ati 9200SE, Abit KT7 Mother Board, 80Gb WD HD, Kingston pc2700 256 which Im gonna change to PC3200 512 when I get the extra cash, I know im forgetting something....... my p3 laptop supports my linux habbits, that and my new server, when I wanna brows wireless i boot live distro on my newest laptop.

:eek: