home server

[gordintoronto]

Ubuntu Desktop can do everything Ubuntu Server can do, and it provides familiar tools to help you along the way, such as sharing folders by simply right-clicking on them in Nautilus. It requires a bit more memory, but you have far more than you need.

If you're going to set up remote access over the Internet, you should plan on spending dozens of hours educating yourself on security. Remote access is not difficult, *secure* remote access is a different story.

[RobertKH]

My question was on the premise that I need to have 2 identical sized drives in order to stripe properly right? Since my box has a spot for 2x 2.5" drives I thought I should have my OS installed on that right? FreeNAS runs off a USB stick, and I don't really want to do that. Probably something like a 32g SSD would be great. Only around 50$ on newegg. So should I be installing Ubuntu desktop on that? I should right?

Btw I played with Vbox some tonight, but its doggy as hell. I imagine its because my windows laptop only has 2g ram and I had to dedicate half to the Vbox. I'll do some more testing with raid set-ups and the like soon.

[lykwydchykyn]

I would not stripe the drives. If either drive has a fault, it's all gone.
I'm not sure Linux or Windows supports installing the OS to striped drives, unless you do it using hardware RAID, though I could be wrong. I've put Linux on software RAID 5, which is probably better if you can scare up a third drive. This can all be set up in the Ubuntu server (text-mode) installer. I don't think the desktop installer can do this.

I don't understand where virtualbox fits into all this, or why you'd want to mess with that on a home server. Just a waste of resources. If you really want to virtualize ubuntu on top of ubuntu, you're better off using containers.

[RobertKH]

My only reason for playing with vbox is that i wanted to try out different configurations before putting them into place on my box. Working on setting up a mdadm setup right now actually. Although I am just using small 1gb virtual disks to see how it behaves. I think that I can pick up another drive. Those WD reds are somewhat cheap at only 85$ for a 1TB. I appreciate all the info. I think that I will go with a RAID setup rather than striping. I don't really want to lose everything because a drive fails.

Can I have the desktop version of Ubuntu send me an email when a drive starts to fail? I'd assume that I can install the mail server on the desktop, but I am not 100% yet.

On a side note, I can run FreeNAS on a virtual disk so it doesn't take up an entire drive or have to keep a usb plugged in. I could run it on a SSD, however the smallest would be a 32gb and that would be way to much room for such a small program.

Keep the replies coming. I enjoy reading every one.

[darkod]

If for raid you plan mdadm SW raid, you can install the OS on raid0 with the condition that you create small raid1 md device for /boot. When the boot files are outside the raid0 you can have the OS on it.

If you want the OS on totally separate disk, yes, you will need to add a third one. Whether it's 2.5" hdd, 2.5" ssd or even a CF card with CF-to-SATA adapter, it doesn't matter much. Compared to buying a small ssd another interesting idea is the CF card, especially if you don't need much space like with FreeNAS. It would be ideal for FreeNAS actually, and even for Ubuntu Server if you don't keep much data in /. The server default install with SSH and samba takes only about 2GB.
The main data will be on your array anyway.

As for the array type, have in mind that if one disk fails in raid0 you lose all the data, so it's your choice whether you will use raid0 or raid1.

[lykwydchykyn]

Can I have the desktop version of Ubuntu send me an email when a drive starts to fail? I'd assume that I can install the mail server on the desktop, but I am not 100% yet.

You can set up anything on Ubuntu desktop that you can set up on the server. Unlike Windows, there's no fundamental difference between server and desktop editions, it's just a question of default packages and configurations. They both pull from the same repositories and use the same set of packages.

Sending an email means setting up an MTA; I prefer postfix myself. You'll need to have an SMTP server you can relay off of to send email outside your own network. You will need to talk to your ISP about that, I don't think most ISPs let you relay because of spammers.

[RobertKH]

So how do I setup postfix? I've installed mdadm on my boot disk and skipped over the postfix stuff. So how do I change it now?

[darkod]

If you want to call up the task selector (roles selector) that appears during the install, you can always do it at the command line with:
sudo tasksel

But since you know exactly what you want to install, you can simply do:
sudo apt-get install postfix

That will install it with all dependent packages.
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/postfix.html

[RobertKH]

Well last night I installed Ubuntu 12.10 x64 on my hard drive that'll run it all. To ought I built my box and at least got the disks formatted. However I need to go pik up a better power supply. This one was loud. Took it apart to find the shrouds weren't even stuck to anything. I'll continue tomorrow night. The box is extremely tight. I found it easier to plug everything in with the power supply and motherboard removed. Made install quick and painless. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

[RobertKH]

Sorry, haven't had the chance to upload pics yet. However I am having a slight problem with the audio. I have an HDMI cable plugged in to my tv directly from my box. However i can watch the videos, but there is no sound. I have a disk from Gigabyte, however i have no CDROM drive attached. I did manage to rip the .iso off the cd and create a boot usb using unetbootin, however i cant seem to figure out which druve it is. Also its mostly windows .exe files that dont open on the U. Any ideas? Oh, btw I picked up a new power supply and its "whisper quiet". I can hardly tell its running. In fact my laptop makes more fan noise than the server.