Is linux for me and my fileserver?

S

swoop56

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2002
Messages
418
I have a fileserver that is currently made up of two 120GB drives in RAID 1 running off of an 80GB drive with Win2k3 server. It's suits me just fine. And allows me to make backup's and FTP from remote places to retrieve files. That's about all I need out of a fileserver.

But I keep hearing how linux is great for server's and such but sadly, I don't know a damn thing about it. What I want to do is update my file server to contain 2 radi 1 array's. One made of of 120GB drivs and the other of 250GB drives. And I want them to run off of a 20GB drive with an install of linux. My raid cards are both highpoint and capable of supporting linux. There are drivers for SUSE, Red Hat and FreeBSD.

I would like to install a distro of linux that would be easily compatable with my RAID cards. That would be easy to install. Offer a means of management that is optional between a graphic interface or command line. Also, some reccomended applications for backing up and an ftpserver that supports secure ftp connections. Also, free would be preferable.
 
Do you have a old spare computer to play with? Thats what I would reccomend. I would think that taking down your server for a couple of days to learn linux would suck when you really need it for something.

That way you can learn linux and still have the server, and when you decided to switch it will only take a few hours or so.
 
Wild Weasel said:
Do you have a old spare computer to play with? Thats what I would reccomend. I would think that taking down your server for a couple of days to learn linux would suck when you really need it for something.

That way you can learn linux and still have the server, and when you decided to switch it will only take a few hours or so.
Click to expand...

OFT there.... Find a beater machine with a 10gb drive and 128-256mb of ram to play around with. Old p3's come to mind or old p2's would work as well.

I'd suggest a p3 class machine and the 256mb if you are set on a GUI, but truth be told, anything would work to learn on.

I'm in total agreement about how much things would suck having to take down a working machine to learn linux on. If it were me, I'd give up in a week and switch back to w2k or something.
 
I tend to agree. If you want to learn more about Linux (or other unix-like operating systems, like FreeBSD), your best bet is to set up another machine before taking down a box that's important to you.

However, if it's working fine, why mess with it? Particularly if you're doing everything legally, why not? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I'm counting down the seconds waiting on a Linux user to attack me for not being open-minded about open-source software and suggesting that someone keep using Windows if it's doing everything they need and they are happy with it...
 
Does Win2kserver use NTFS?


If it does, don't bother changing to linux...Since last I checked NTFS support in linux is nill at best.
 
NTFS read support is 100%. Write support on the other hand is spotty. I have successfully written to an NTFS drive without incident. There are a few ways you can do it, and each could potentially hose your drive.

This could be the best option:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/captive

It uses Microsoft's own ntfs drivers to write to the drive.
 
thats not much of a reason to stay because it's not that difficult to convert it to a superior linux filesystem.

Komataguri said:
Does Win2kserver use NTFS?


If it does, don't bother changing to linux...Since last I checked NTFS support in linux is nill at best.
Click to expand...
 
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