I’m currently in the process of building myself a new home file server, to act as a storage medium for my MP3 music collection, my father’s business document backups, as well as to do compiles of software projects I’m working on.
For this, I’ve basically taken my old desktop computer (sans high-end graphics card) and place it in an Antec rack-mount case. After adding an expensive RAID card and a few hard drives, I have the hardware ready to go (though I am still contemplating the purchase of a PCI-based ADSL interface card).
Naturally, Debian was the first choice of operating system. Although I toyed with the idea of Windows Vista Business enough to almost go out and buy a copy, I decided:
- It wasn’t worth the $140 just to have the use of Remote Desktop instead of SSH.
- In the future, I may also want to use the server as an ADSL gateway, wireless access point, compile box, TeX environment, web server, etc. Vista can’t be made to do any of that easily.
Installing Debian was an interesting experience. I originally had the two 80GB Seagate hard drives installed on the onboard JMicron RAID controller (to run in RAID 1 for extra dependability). I couldn’t find drivers for this chipset that my Debian install disc would like. I then changed to using the JMicron controller in plain IDE-compatibility mode. Debian picked up only one hard drive. I’m still bemused by how this is possible: both the BIOS and a UBCD4Win disc pick up two. I then switched the hard drives and plugged them into the ICH9 controller. Debian picked up both of them, and so far is working fine. Although the ICH9 chip on my motherboard (a GA-P35-DS3) doesn’t support RAID, I’m still fairly happy. Anything I really want to keep will be stored on the RAID set managed by the RocketRAID card.
During the install process (and with all these changes of plan), it was great to have one of my Linux-savvy friends, Chris Neugebauer, on hand. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the #debian channel on Freenode. On both the occasions I asked questions, I was just plain ignored. Now, I know they don’t owe me anything, but a simple “Sorry, no idea, you’re on your own” would have been nice.
But apart from that minor downside, both the hardware and software are going really well so far. I’ll probably follow up with another article once I’ve finished further my home network. I still want to buy a few more parts…