I have a spare PC which I would like to use as a backup 'file server'. This would be a place to copy files (photos, music, documents, etc) for backup purposes from other PC's in my house. Having never tried my hand at this, I thought I'd ask for some basic tips. Not too much detail, just a basic outline. That way I can learn more by figuring out the details.

Background: We have a wired/wireless D-Link router connecting all the PC's to the Internet. Attached by ethernet cable to the router are: 2 Windows PCs and 2 Linux PC's, one of which will be the server. We also have 2 wireless laptops and 1 wireless desktop, all on Windows (sorry, this was not my choice).

One of the Linux boxes will be reinstalled with ??? to act as the server. All the windows PC's probably have different workgroup names, and the domain names on the Linux PC's are also random. I never thought much about being consistant, didn't know I would want to try this someday.

For the file server, is there a distro that is good? I prefer Debian and PCLOS, but I have used many others. I know I will need samba on the server, but that's about it.

What are the basic steps?

I've been wanting to do this, but due to external financial factors, I haven't been able to get around to it yet. What I was going to do was to build a system with a small hard drive (4-8gig or so) for the os, and as many as possible huge drives configured in a raid 5 array with LVM for storage. I then was going to enable samba shares (for win boxes) and nfs (for my other *nix boxes).
Just about any distro will do, I would start with what you are familiar with, since you are going to be new to the storage stuff.

I believe that this will get you going in the right direction plus some...

http://www.aboutdebian.com/lan.htm

Hello

I have build my fileserver on Debian stable distribution, no reason to go for anything else.

The file server I have build, contains of 1 little OS disk, 4 x 300 Gbyte disks, build with RAID-5, and one 600 Gbyte single disk.
The reason to do it this way, is to have all the data (Photo, files, documents) placed on the RAID-5, in this way some security for the data is present. Every night I backup the data placed on the RAID-5 to the single 600 Gbyte disk. If my RAID-5 is destroyed I have the backup on a different disk.

The network I have made, is build around a switch. The Debian server acts as a router, and a internet firewall. PC's both Linux and windows are connected to the switch, and a cisco wireless router is connected to be able to run wireless.

What I have been working most with is rights on the files that are placed on the fileserver. I have created the fileserver with three different mount points, "share for reading", "My own share" and "To be shared".
"Share for reading",,, is used to place files that can bee read by all that is connected by samba.
"My own share" Is for the files personal to the connected user.
"To be shared" is for files that the user wants to share with other users.

Hops this can give you some inspiration.

Did I read that correctly, Irieneck...

You're using your router/firewall server as your fileshare server also?

That seems to create a potential risk that you would not want to take with your personal files.

Hello Linville79

Yes you read that correctly, I have more network interfaces in the server, and I keep all my internal traffic on onr of the interfaces, and all the external traffic on another through the firewall.

I just made some positive experiments with Xen running multiple Gentoo Linux and Windows installations on the same machine. I would therefore like to build a server which would act as a Firewall/Fileserver/Webserver/Remote Windows (using SSH Explorer) having all these systems isolated from each other.
As once two Samsung disks failed almost at the same time (no clue why - new ones are now working perfectly), I was now thinking about installing a RAID 6 instead of RAID 5.
Does anybody have experience with RAID 6 using LVM(2)/Linux Software RAID, especially concerning stability and performance/CPU overhead?
Thanks a lot!