32 Flavors, but which one?

[antieuclid]

I am a college freshman with more hard drives than I have hard drive bays. This has motivated me in recent months to begin aquiring components to build myself a file server. By file server, I mean a computer that will sit quietly and dispense data, working on SETI@home in it's spare time. I want to have it run some flavor of Linux, but I don't yet know which one. Here are my requirements:

It needs to be realtively easy to use. I've never tried linux before and this things without GUIs drive me nuts. I'm pretty good at figuring stuff out but if all it gives me is a blinking cursor I don't have the time to guess at commands until it does something.

It needs to play nice with the other computers in the house, all of which are running Windows XP. I need to be able to set up some easy way for all the other computers to be able to access the files on the server. It would be a plus if I could access the files from the web. (I'm pretty sure that just means being able to use ssh)

It needs to run Seti@home. Because of the spare parts I had on hand, this file server has an Athlon XP 2100+, and idle processors do the devil's work.

I need to be able to install it without tearing my hair out. Or knowing assembly programming.


Any suggestions as to what distro of Linux I should use, or general suggestions about installation, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[stash]

Redhat and Mandake are plenty GUI-fied

 

[spyordie007]

another vote for Mandrake, should be pretty easy for you to setup and use.

-Spy

 

[Wolf00]

I just installed RedHat 9 and it installed really easily. I've been using Mandrake for a while now and haven't used RedHat in a while and was pleasantly surprised because I had bad memories of installation issues a while back. I agree with STaSh in that either Redhat or Mandrake are going to be good choices.
As for playing nice with WinXP, that's really not a problem as Samba is an option and it's pretty easy to get setup or you can use FTP to transfer files to and from the server. Also, as for accessing the files from the web, you can either access them via a web server or an ftp server if you're looking for being able to download the files. If you're just looking to be able to read the files, then ssh would work just fine since it'll give you a command line.
The only thing I'm not sure of is whether either of these works with SETI@Home. I don't know anything about the program, so you may have to do some research on your own about that program first. That will help narrow down your selections for you a little bit and you won't have to waste your time looking at distrobutions that don't work.

Good Luck

 

[n0cmonkey]

All major distributions of Linux on x86 will run S@H just fine. They will also run ecc2 pretty well

The only problem with s@h I have seen so far, is that the Linux version is slower than the Windows version. Best thing to keep the speed up is to install WINE and install the Windows version of s@h. But I can't help you with that, there should be instructions in the DC forum somewhere.

 

[antieuclid]

about file sharing: I've got Mandrake installed (thanks for all the suggestions!) and i'd like to set up an easy way for the other computers to access files before I move all my hard drives over. I'm thinking probably ftp. Is that the way to go? if it is, how do I set it up?

 

[skyking]

Samba for filesharing on the LAN, SSH and Sftp for filesharing on the WAN.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: skyking
Samba for filesharing on the LAN, SSH and Sftp for filesharing on the WAN.

Samba is for SMB shares. NFS can also work. sftp wouldn't be bad.

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: skyking
Samba for filesharing on the LAN, SSH and Sftp for filesharing on the WAN.

Samba is for SMB shares. NFS can also work. sftp wouldn't be bad.

NFS can work, but for windows machines, nothing is as slick as Samba. SSh and sftp are very easy to implement, and pose a much smaller security threat than ftp, which also requires a good bit of setting up.

 

[Bilo86]

FTP might be quicker and easier if you dont want to go about setting up the filesharing as this could be a pretty troubleshooting task.

 

[antieuclid]

This is slightly embarassing, but I can't find samba. Anyone know where it is in Mandrake?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: antieuclid
This is slightly embarassing, but I can't find samba. Anyone know where it is in Mandrake?

If you did not install EVERYTHING, it may not have been installed.

 

[antieuclid]

I did install everything, at least everything it asked me about, and when I look around in assorted directories I can find a directory for samba, which contains a couple of config files, but I can't find anything remotely resembling an easy to use program. Also, what does one use to set up sftp?

 

[Panther505]

paste the results of the following (from a command line)

rpm -qa |grep samba


if you see samba-common, and others then you have it installed.

 

[darktubbly]

Originally posted by: antieuclid
This is slightly embarassing, but I can't find samba. Anyone know where it is in Mandrake?

It's been a while since I've used Mandrake, so bear with me. If you have it installed, there should be a file called rc.samba in /etc/rc.d and smbd in /usr/sbin. If not, go to your Add Software applet, do a search for Samba, and install the necessary packages.

 

[antieuclid]

[root@localhost antieuclid]# rpm -qa |grep samba
/usr/lib/rpm/rpmq: error while loading shared libraries: librpmdb-4.0.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[root@localhost antieuclid]#

When I try to run the rpmDrake thing in the Mandrake Control Center, nothing happens. I click on the icon, and the logs say the program is starting, but it never does.

 

[n0cmonkey]

find / -name smb