Which Distribution for old PC to use as File Server 1998

On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 19:46:15 -0700, brentfidler

The processor is more than fast enough to run anything, your problem is the RAM. If I were you I'd throw in at least another 256M, I have a PII 450MHz-384M machine that I use as my CVS server. I'm using FC4 on that machine.

I don't think the distribution will make much difference. You don't need to run X on that machine since it's just going to be a server. Without any of the GUIs Linux is pretty much just Linux. My suggestion would be to install Fedora Core 5 and run it at runlevel 3 (no X). Inetc-inittab set the level to 3,

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are: # 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this) # 1 - Single user mode # 2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking) # 3 - Full multiuser mode # 4 - unused # 5 - X11 # 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this) # id:3:initdefault:

For managing the machine I'd suggest you use webmin, get it from allow you to configure SAMBA-NFS-SSH from any machine with a browser. You access it as follows,

Where IP is the IP address of that machine on your LAN.

By using webmin you'll have an easy to use configuration tool that can run on any machine in your network so the lack of X on your server won't be limiting.