I am about to embark on a project of turning an old Pentium 2 based HP with a 192mb of ram into a file/media server. I have never even used Linux, and know very little about it, but have always wanted to use it.

Here is what I mean by a file/media server: Basically I just want to setup a file server with samba workgroup file sharing, be able to access it remotely, and use azures remotely. In order to run azureus I need to run JRE runtime.

Why I want to do it: I download a lot of bittorrents, and have a large music collection thats all stored on my desktop. I also watch a lot of content, and listen to music on my modded xbox through my network. This all takes resources on my desktop, and it has to be running almost all the time with a 500 watt power supply. If I build the server than I can have it running all the time with 110 watt power supply.

This is what I already have planned: I already have figured out a way to mod the case to run 2 hard drives. I'm also going to mod it for better cooling. I plan on buying a cheap SATA RAID card for around $20-$25, a gigabit ethernet card for about $15-$20, and running 2 160 gig SATA drives in RAID0.

This is what I would like advice on if people would be so kind: What distro should I run? I'm looking for something easy since I've never done this before. Any advice on which RAID card or gigabit network adapter card to buy would be helpful. And any links with tutorials or anything like that would be great. There are a few remote access plugins for azureus, which one should I use? I was thinking of going with Telnet access.

Any advice at all is very much appreciated!

OK, this isn't a small topic is it? But hopefully this will get you started:

Plan your network:
You've given some thought to your hardware, but you haven't told us how you want to structure your little network. For what you want to do, my recommendation would be to connect your internet to the Linux box and then connect the Linux box to a switch/hub. Your Windows(?) box can plug into the same switch/hub and share the Linux box's connection. The reason this is good is that your Linux box can work as a router, providing extra protection for your Windows machine. This is especially good if you're using an ADSL modem or other connection method that doesn't act as a hardware firewall.

What distro:
If you're completely new to Linux, I'd use either Mandriva 2006 or Fedora Core 4. Both have simple installation procedures and easy-to-use "package management systems" (which means you can avoid compiling things from source - not that compiling is difficult or frightening - but it's one less thing to think about at this stage). For now, avoid the distros with a steeper learning curve like Debian, Gentoo, and Slackware.

What RAID card:
It's good that you're thinking about this now rather than later. RAID can be tricky. The best thing to do is to check the hardware compatibility lists for the distros you're interested in. Get a card that others have succeeded with in the past.

Samba:
This will be easy. Once your Linux box is up and samba is installed, you just edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file to define a share, and give a Linux user a samba password with the smbpasswd command. Then, on Windows, you just make a link to \\LinuxBox\whatever_share. When you access this share it will ask you for your username and password, and then it's just like having another window open in explorer. But you'll get much clearer advice by searching for "Samba HOWTO" on any search engine.

Shell access:
No telnet. Telnet is not secure. Use ssh on the Linux box for encrypted shell access. You can get a freeware ssh client for Windows called PuTTY.

Azureus:
I don't know so much about this. I certainly can't advise on remote plugins. Another option (which I also don't know much about) is a program called Cygwin. It will allow you to display X windows on your Windows machine, so you could actually relay the display.

Hopefully that's some help. If/When you have more questions, post them!

My network is pretty basic. Iv'e got 2 XP machines and my modded xbox all connected to a Dlink gameing router with a built in gigabit switch. I have my broadband connection just pluged into the wan port of the router, but the router does have a built in firewall (so does my nforce4 ultra board, but I don't use it because I've had problems with it). Its also got wireless for my laptop. I plan on just connecting the server to the remaining port.

I was going to use telnet just for azureus. Its really important to be able to remote access azureus because bittorrents really fragment your dirve. Otherwise I got to look up the torrent with the server ect. I think if I use azureus with remote access then its like I'm just using it on my desktop except all the work is being done by the server, but I could be wrong. I don't think that security has to be a huge issue with that either since its going to just be on my personal home network. Its cool if no one knows the answer to that question. I was thinking that it would probably be more suited for an azureus forum then here. I'll find out one way or another, I ussually do.

I've alread been looking into the hardware, and found some that sound good. Just wondering if anyone has had any good or bad experiencies with a particular hardware, and wanted to make a recomendation.

I have looked at SAMBA how to's but they were kinda confusing for me. Plus they always said that they were for this or that distro. And I wasn't sure if it was the same for all distros.

I really apperciate your post conn-fused. Thanks

Sorry if this doesn't sound right. I'm really tired, and about to go to sleep.

For a Linux distribution I suggest SimplyMEPIS. It is a live CD based on Debian and easily and quickly (<10 minutes) installs to hard disk. It has both Azureus and SAMBA already installed and configured, and many other goodies. It's a great way to be introduced to Linux.

I have had serious problems with both Mandriva and Fedora but if either of them works for you, more power to you!

That sounds great. I wonder how it is on RAID arrays. Do you still have to edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file to define a share.

Also, if you are running this as a dedicated server, you should not run X on it (i.e. runlevel 3); that will save a lot of RAM.

The only thing besides using it as a server that I'm going to use it for is to run azureus. I tried to find out if I could run it without running X, but could not find a definite answer. I guess that I will find out when I get to that point.

Well if you are running it remotely, you don't need X on the machine (you only need the X on your machine).

Right on! Yeah, that old P2 with SD ram is going to need all the resources that it can get. I just think this is a good rout to go. You know, I looked into the new network external drives, but I hear that they are slow on transfers. This way I can run it at 1gb/s transfer, runazureus on it, and run a RAID. And since I got the old P2 for free its actually going to be cheaper. I'm thinking about documenting the process and posting it on the web when I'm done becuse I think other people might want to do the same thing.

I have not tried RAID---I don't have enough drives.

You don't need to edit smb.conf to make a file or directory shareable. You can use Konqueror (the KDE file manager) to make any file or directory shareable. In addition MEPIS has a few directories that are shareable by default; a soft link in any of these directories will make its target shareable.

If I can I might just map the whole thing as a network drive.

I've been trying to look into RAID cards, and how to install them in Linux, but havn't had much luck. Is it really that hard to configure a RAID on Linux.

If it's a hardware RAID card then there should be no configuration in linux really. Also azureus won't run without X, I believe it has a CLI client but it doesn't work real well but that's okay cause azureus is overrated anyway. rtorrent is a fantastic CLI bittorrent app, I'd suggest that, admin the machine via ssh over the network and use samba to share something like /share so you can easy move stuff to and from the machine. Sharing / isn't the best idea IMO.

But with azureus I can use a remote plugin, and I won't have to access the whole OS to download a torrent.

But with SSH, you can access the whole OS remotely and do whatever you like without directly accessing the computer. It's an addictive technology