Les wrote:
I currently have four systems on my home network. I have them all
configured as standalone systems, but the burden of backing them up etc.
etc. is becoming too much. I want to set up a full network with server
and common user directories. Currently I have 2 Linux only systems, one
windows only system, and one dual boot.
I have been monitoring (and sometimes helping, occasionally kibbutzing)
the mailing list, so I believe I can figure out most of it by now.
However, here is my question.
I have one older low-end system, and one dual cpu system that is on all
the time, either of which could be the server. However, the dual cpu
system is where I do most of my work, including dual boot to windows.
This makes it a bad prospect for a network server. I could configure
and run XP pro in a virtual setup, but I am leery of making the full
change to network server, with a virtual windows client and doing work
on the server (compiling and running programs with occasional resets to
clean up my big goofs).
I am leery of using the older system simply because I suspect it is
approaching mechanical, support, and electrical end of life (over 6
years old). Buying a new system is possible, but adding yet another
300watts to my system load would be tough.
I think I would need to add wiring to the house. So, the question
becomes do I trust the older system, make my system the server, adopt
the remaining system (currently running f8) as a server, or should I
just throw down the cash and get yet one more system for a server. Also
I am thinking that having a common server would make backuppc simpler
and support, backup issues and so forth would be much simpler. Could I
continue to have the mail setup as it is with each system downloading
email from my ISP? Setting up a mail server is not something I want to
do for our home stuff.
I'd add an SATA controller and a couple of new drives to the older
low-end system, install Centos 5.x so you won't have to do anything but
'yum update' on it for years, share out one of the drives with NFS and
samba, and install backuppc on the other. If/when the box dies (some of
those old BX chipset motherboards seem to run forever) you can easily
swap the disks into its replacement. Or, if you want to save a box, put
the drives (and Centos) on your dual-CPU system and run both fedora and
XP under VMware when you want them. File serving doesn't take a lot of
resources and you can schedule the backups to run when you won't be
using the machine. If you think you might want to mirror these drives
later, you can create a RAID1 with one of the devices specified as
'missing'. The md device will work fine that way and at any later time
you can add another disk and use mdadm --add to start mirroring. It's
not much extra work to set that up initially but fairly difficult if you
change your mind and want to mirror a normal partition.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
