Hi all,
I currently have a low powered server which runs 24x7 mainly for home theatre purposes along with centralised file storage and file downloading. I initially got it up and running reasonably well with Ubuntu Server 11.04. However the configuration is not quite up to my liking (although it is almost perfect for my needs). The main reason for that is that I am not totally familiar with Linux and had to learn a lot of things along the way. I also found out that Webmin really is not that brilliant of a centralised system configuration software (if there is a better one which works well then please recommend it
). Along with that, I do not have a proper backup solution at this stage (which is asking for trouble at some stage).
Therefore when I buy a pretty big external hard drive (which I will use for a periodic backup of the contents of the data on the server), I am willing to reformat the server and start from scratch (although it is not really necessary strictly).
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The important things I have setup at the moment are:
Serviio - DLNA server to share video, music and images over the network (mainly there to be used by the television or to my laptop where buffering over SMB does not work particularly well).
Samba - Convenient file transfer interface over the network for Windows and Linux clients.
Saned - I am running the saned backend on the server so each PC on the network can utilise the scanner from anywhere.
mdadm - Software raid on Linux. I have configured RAID 10 over 4x2Tb hard drives. Linux does not support the inbuilt RAID controller on the system (however I doubt it is that good or any better anyway).
FTP - SMB (via Samba) does not seem to be the best file transfer protocol over a wireless connection. FTP file transfers seem to work much more reliably, is a bit faster and it has built-in resume functions (useful when wireless connection drops or when transferring big files).
Transmission - Centralised BitTorrent server so every PC on the network can control torrents.
PyLoad - Centralised web based file downloading application (useful when downloading from certain free upload websites and for downloading large files).
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I wanted to try out Oracle DBMS on my Linux box for R&D purposes, however I found out that it is really difficult to get going on Ubuntu and especially on Ubuntu 11.xx. This is the main reason why I am willing to try out a different server OS, one where installing Oracle will not be so incredibly painful.
-----------------
Therefore I need to make a reasonably important decision. Which server operating system should I use?
I have been thinking about sticking with Ubuntu Server and this time doing all the configuration on my own (without Webmin at all) or using specialised configuration software which actually works pretty well (SWAT for Samba? for instance) or to try out CentOS. Although I am open to other alternatives.
I am also open to ideas on better ways to configure a Linux (or other) server.
I currently have a low powered server which runs 24x7 mainly for home theatre purposes along with centralised file storage and file downloading. I initially got it up and running reasonably well with Ubuntu Server 11.04. However the configuration is not quite up to my liking (although it is almost perfect for my needs). The main reason for that is that I am not totally familiar with Linux and had to learn a lot of things along the way. I also found out that Webmin really is not that brilliant of a centralised system configuration software (if there is a better one which works well then please recommend it
). Along with that, I do not have a proper backup solution at this stage (which is asking for trouble at some stage).Therefore when I buy a pretty big external hard drive (which I will use for a periodic backup of the contents of the data on the server), I am willing to reformat the server and start from scratch (although it is not really necessary strictly).
-----------------
The important things I have setup at the moment are:
Serviio - DLNA server to share video, music and images over the network (mainly there to be used by the television or to my laptop where buffering over SMB does not work particularly well).
Samba - Convenient file transfer interface over the network for Windows and Linux clients.
Saned - I am running the saned backend on the server so each PC on the network can utilise the scanner from anywhere.
mdadm - Software raid on Linux. I have configured RAID 10 over 4x2Tb hard drives. Linux does not support the inbuilt RAID controller on the system (however I doubt it is that good or any better anyway).
FTP - SMB (via Samba) does not seem to be the best file transfer protocol over a wireless connection. FTP file transfers seem to work much more reliably, is a bit faster and it has built-in resume functions (useful when wireless connection drops or when transferring big files).
Transmission - Centralised BitTorrent server so every PC on the network can control torrents.
PyLoad - Centralised web based file downloading application (useful when downloading from certain free upload websites and for downloading large files).
-----------------
I wanted to try out Oracle DBMS on my Linux box for R&D purposes, however I found out that it is really difficult to get going on Ubuntu and especially on Ubuntu 11.xx. This is the main reason why I am willing to try out a different server OS, one where installing Oracle will not be so incredibly painful.
-----------------
Therefore I need to make a reasonably important decision. Which server operating system should I use?
I have been thinking about sticking with Ubuntu Server and this time doing all the configuration on my own (without Webmin at all) or using specialised configuration software which actually works pretty well (SWAT for Samba? for instance) or to try out CentOS. Although I am open to other alternatives.
I am also open to ideas on better ways to configure a Linux (or other) server.
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