I am planning on making a server out of a AMD 3800+ X2 64bit CPU, raid 1 MB mirroring two 250 GB SATA2 HD's, 1GB memory and Suse 10.2. I want it to serve two windows laptops and two desktops using XP pro and home. Frankly, I haven't a clue as to what I'm doing or how to go about it. Will Suse work with my motherboard in order to mirror my data? Will it play.."Nice-Nice" with my XP OS's? Hmmm...I guess that should be the other way around. How do I go about this?

well what do you even want to serve?? there's literally hundreds of things that a "server" could do... http, smb, nfs, ntp, ssh, rtsp, xdmcp, tftp, smtp, pop3, imap etc, etc...

i'd assume you mean a windows file server though, in which case you need to read up on samba, as that's the server you need to configure.

as for raid, you've not said a thing about your motherboard, so if you're looking at hardware raid, then we couldn't even begin to comment. if you're looking at software raid, then the hardware doesn't care.

Where is the best source for learning Samba?

Yes, it is a Windows files that I desire. I guess I'll have to read up on Samba. I wish there was some sort of quick, easy solution.

SuSE actually does not boot from a Raid System.
If you use hardware Raid then need to look which Raid Controller is supported by SuSE.
But even you have a supported controller, you should not use Raid for your Root partition / drive.

You might want to look into other distributions, I didn't do that yet.
I only know about SuSE as we use this distro on all our Servers and Raid is definitly a problem there on the root drive but works fine with the correct controller (I think we use Adaptec 2110s or similar - which is quite expensive and for SCSI Drives) for e.g. drives containing only data.

What I would like to know is, if anyone knows which SATA Raid Controllers are supported by SuSE.

That would be useful. I'm not too happy about having to find a new distro though. Ouch!

Oh well, I've been considering another distro since Suse started licking Gates south gates. Thanks for the advice you two.

Oh and it's MSI K8T Neo2-F (V 2.0) Motherboard.

not booting from raid really isn't an issue here at all. just have a /boot parition outside of raid and you're away... nothing complicated there.

If you install the samba-doc package, it includes the "Samba 3 by Example" book, which may be the quickest way to get started. Since on of the XP hosts is the Home edition, then don't use security=domain. XP Home edition computers can't join a domain. The Samba documentation points this out.

Hmmm...I guess a bit of serious reading is in order. Actually, for me... it is a bit complicated. I've piddled with Linux for years now, but haven't delved into this particular area before. I feel as if I'm starting over again. Oh well....Thanks you two.