Linux for File Server

In a message on Tue, 26 Apr 2005 20:19:06 +0000 (UTC), wrote :

Any distro will work, but you want a 'boring' stable distro. So long as you use standard, 'bland' hardware (standard-common disk controllers for example).

There isn't a 'custom' distribution that is specific to file server only. All distros have the basic set of packages for a file server (NFS for UNIX, Samba for MS-Windows, and NetATalk for (old) MacOS). I RHEL 4.0). Either of these is a basic, stable, easy to deal with distribution. Avoid a 'bleeding edge' distro -- you don't need support for bleeding edge hardware (like sound cards or fancy video cards). at the end -- you want the machine to come up in runlevel 3 (*any* video card will work in console mode).

It should install all of what you need for a file server. It may also install the web server (you might NOT want that, at least not as a general public web server) and might want to install a database server and-or the news server (you don't want or need either - you should disable these). You might want the mail server, since it is not recommended to run a mail server with a NFS mounted mail spool. Print server, *maybe*. I don't know about web-base config stuff -- there is something that does that, but I've never used it, since I am 'old school' and use SSH and CLI-based config stuff.

For a dedicated file server you might want to consider a hardware SCSI RAID system. You can use the LVM package to manage on-the-fly parbreastion creation and resizing (add-remove-resize logical disks without having to reboot). We have a DELL server box with a Mylex SCSI RAID card for the CVRL's file and mail server, running WBL 3.0. Works great (it is a dual hyper-threaded Xeon system):

sauron.deepsoft.com% ssh libranew.cs.umbutt.edu uptime 19:42:11 up 235 days, 6:18, 0 users, load average: 2.08, 2.01, 1.94 sauron.deepsoft.com% ssh libranew.cs.umbutt.edu uname -a Linux libranew.cs.umbutt.edu 2.4.21-15.0.4.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Aug 4 02:50:25 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU-Linux