openSUSE Club

So, you’ve got an old computer, and you don’t know what to do with it. Sure, it can’t play new video games, maybe can’t run the latest and greatest software, don’t fret, it’s not totally worthless. Converting your old computer in to a home data server opens a range of possibilities, and a range of new things you can do with your computer(s) and the network.

So, how do you do it? Well, if it’s already set up for Windows Networking, you’ve got the basics set up for a Windows file server, and can simply use your local area network for transfering/working with files, however, this article is going to show you the more effective, and more powerful way: setting up a Linux file server.

The first step is to pick a Linux distro, DistroWatch.com lists the most popular distributions, and reviews a range of distributions, we’re going to use the Ubuntu [5.10] operating system, with a server installation, simply because it’s the operating system this author uses for his desktop, and is quickly becoming the most popular distribution around.

Your old computer likely has enough memory, and a powerful enough CPU to run Ubuntu, however, if you intend to use this server as a major central file server, it will likely need a new hard-drive. You can deal with that on your own.

When you insert the Ubuntu CD, and boot to it, instead of just pressing [enter] at the boot screen, type ’server’ then press enter - this will prevent it from installing any of the *-desktop packages, and not setting up any unneeded applications.

After following the steps of installation, you will be prompted with a logon screen - enter the username and password you provided during installation, and you are in your brand new Linux system. From here, you can do everything from browse the web, to set up the computer for various networking tasks, to play a range of Linux-based games.

Package management is a critical part of running a Linux system, luckily Ubuntu comes with two distinct and useful tools to aid in your package managing. Aptitude [which, is actually just a UI for apt-get] and apt-get.

A package called “samba” will allow you to set up proper networking between Linux and Windows computers (at least, we hope you’ve got your networking issues sorted out). Running “sudo apt-get install samba” in your new command line will tell the apt-get application to install the samba package, and set it up with default settings.

Once samba is installed, you’ll want to set it up to share certain files/directories, and set them up on your network - samba networking is a massive topic of it’s own, and way beyond the scope of this article, however, running “man samba” will give you the samba manual file, which lists off a series of other manuals to look at. Google’s always helpful too.

Now, once you have networking and samba set up, you should be able to transfer files between Windows and Linux through Network Neighborhood/smbclient - you’ve now got a basic data server set up. That was easy, wasn’t it?

For those who want to go further, Pure-FTPd will allow you to set up a fully featured FTP (file transfer protocol) server on this box, which you could use to access your files remotely from any computer set up with an FTP client (Windows Explorer has one built in!), setting up an Apache based web-server is fairly simple with Ubuntu’s apt-get packages, and OpenSSH allows the user to remotely log in to the Linux shell from any computer equipped with an SSH client.

A slight advancement to this system could allow you to set up Bash scripts combined with cron would allow you to set up scripts which immediately backup files every X days, or scripts to do certain processing to files at certain times - the possibilities are effectively endless.

Adan X. Knife is a computer scientist, entrepreneur and web developer. He currently runs a network of websites including one about High Definition Technology and a Free Games Library. He also runs a range of communication related sites including his cellular phone reviews site.

Share This

You know you should take care of your computer, but you don’t know what registry is and what’s the difference between hard-drive and memory stick is. Don’t worry, these tools will do it for you and you don’t even have to set them up.

O&O Defrag Professional (O&O Software GmbH)

The new O&O Defrag Professional Edition for Windows-based workstations unlocks the hidden performance of your computer. This software will optimize your hard disk in Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows NT 4 Workstation, securely repacking fragmented files together for more efficiency.

O&O Defrag’s O&O OneButtonDefrag Technology lets you sit back and relax while the optimal defragmentation configuration is tailored directly to your system. A job is created and then executed, making performance improvements on your system noticably faster. Even in large networks, this sort of automation can lead to unbelievable savings in network administration resources.

Webroot Window Washer (Webroot Software)

Many people do not realize that Internet browsers, as well as many other software products, store information about what they have been doing on their computer systems. Anyone can simply turn on your system and see exactly what you have been doing on your computer. Also, the tracks that are left behind can take up large quantities of valuable hard drive space. Recovering this space can be very beneficial by improving the overall speed and performance of a computer.

Cleaning up the history of your activities can be a tedious chore of manually removing each history file or entry. If privacy and disk space are to be maintained, this process must be performed every time you use your computer. Window Washer can automatically clean up your browser’s cache, cookies, history, recent document list, and much more! Window Washer can run in the background and clean up your tracks when you are done surfing the internet or any other time you choose.

Acronis Disk Director (Acronis)

Acronis Disk Director Suite is disk partitioning software that allows you to automatically or manually resize, copy, and move partitions without losing data. It also lets you reorganize the hard disk drive structure and optimize disk space usage. Acronis Disk Director Suite provides a powerful, reliable, and easy-to-use way to manage booting of multiple operating systems on a single PC.

Disk Director’s integrated Disk Editor program is the only utility in a consumer-level package that can read and write raw data directly from NTFS disks, and only experts should touch it.
The interface is packed with essential tools for jumping to special disk sectors like partition tables and boot sectors. The help system is a detailed technical reference to disk structures.

Download Links:

http://www.deprice.com/oodefragpro.htm

http://www.deprice.com/webrootwindowwasher.htm

http://www.deprice.com/acronisdiskdirectorsuite.htm

John Deprice runs a website devoted to PC tools specifically for newbie users. Visit it at http://www.deprice.com/utilities-8-1.htm

Share This

Unix is one of the most important operating system today. Its powerful features, scalability, strong security, and support for multiple users have made it the top choice operating systems for server, workstations and mainframes.

It is good to have some knowledge of Unix commands especially if your web host is Unix/Linux based. You could do alot of things by yourself by logging into the server via Secure Shell(SSH). This article will describe some of the important “need to know” Unix commands.

1. ls

This command will show you what files are in your current directory. If you add in a -F option, ie “ls -F xxx”, there will be a “/” appended to the end of directory names, * to executables and @ to links. “ls -a xxx” will display all hidden files as well. This is also the most used command.

2. cd

Change directory. If you type “cd xx”, it means to change to the specified directory “xx”. “cd ~” means to change to your default home directory.

3. cp “a b”

Copy file a to b. If b is a directory, the new file will be named b/a.

4. mv “a b”

Move files from a to b. For example, if I type “mv songs.txt /tmp”, the file songs.txt will be moved to /tmp/songs.txt. Moving a file is the same as renaming a file.

5. echo “text”

Print “text” to the terminal. If “text” is surrounded by double quotes, the text will be printed with any environment variables such as $HOME. If “text” is surrounded by single quotes, the “text” is printed without any special processing.

6. pwd

Print the current working directory. Useful command when you are lost in the directories.

7. cat “file”

Print the contents of the specified file(s) to the terminal.

8. less “file”

Display the specified file one screen at a time. Press the spacebar to go to the next screen. Press Q to quit. You often combine “less” with some other commands such as “cat abc | less”. This command means you print the contents of the file abc and display it one page at a time.

9. ps

Display information about your running programs. This is a good command to use if your server is slow and you suspect that some applications are taking too much memory. The most famous command using ps is “ps aux”. This will display useful information on the running programs.

10. rm

Remove or delete a file. If you type “rm -r directory”, it will remove a directory and all the files underneath it recursively.

11. man

This is the most important command. man means “manual”. If you are stuck with cat command for example, type “man cat” and you can see the help file.

Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of SiteCritic Website Reviews. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews,freelance SEO and PHP work.

Share This