I have inherited the old old server from work. Its an IBM PIII with an earth shattering 128mb RAM.

I want to use it as a media server on my home network and am struggling to find which would be my best choice of distro to use. It needs to be simple to use and configure, I don't know any CLI, and it needs to be capable of running on such eclectic hardware.

I hope someone out there is willing to give a few pointers to a complete buffoon!!

Debian! Footprint as small as you want it to be, easy to configure, stable, most likely will be able to handle old hardware..

I'll be back to check, post any issue you have here...

I'd suggest getting your hands on some more RAM. It's cheap these days.

What exactly do you mean by media server ?
A place to store your media ?
A place to stream media from to other machines ?
what exactly is your goal ?

Definitely more RAM for a media server. You could look at Damn Small Linux.

DSL (Damn Small Linux)
-erwin

Ram + Debian a powerful server .)

I had DSL running on a 486PC with 4M ram + 66MHz CPU and I hav a web server + php installed on it and it worked like hell.

I am looking to store all my data, videos, music etc on the server to acess over lan and vpn.

Also, I would like to set up another server of the same/similar spec as a terminal server in six months or so.

I will definately be investing in more RAM at some point, but the purse is properly empty at the mo' and I am itching to do some serious investigative playing in the mean time!!!

I'm sure I've got a DSL live cd round here somewhere, I might have a go with that for now. I am interested to try Debian, but I was (possibly wrongly) under the impression that it was a bit advanced, please bear in mind I'm not that knowledgable and struggle with anything for ages if it's not idiot proof!!

seriously, Debian has a bad rep for being difficult, but it's not! It's as advanced as you want it to be!

I am using Ubuntu Server 8.04 (no gui)on an old dell with...64mb or ram.

It has served well as my file backup, but now I will be retiring it soon so I can have a web server as well.

Mandriva 2009 has LXDE easily installable, and did a lot to speed boot time. I appreciate it a lot on my "salon" PC (see signature).

Yves.

Hi,

The RAM for that IBM PIII maybe harder to find than you think. Could you post the model number and product date code. You will find it on the back panel below the PSU fan.

Those IBM boat anchors were reliable.

There is no label on the back, looks like there was once!! There is a more generic label inside the case with a motherboard schematic on it, this says:-

"Machine Types 8478 and 6846 System Service"

I have no reason to believe anyone at work did anything more than add drives to this machine, so it should be factory spec. The DIMM inside 'looks' fairly standard to my un-trained eye. Labels on it read:-

"HYUNDAI KOREA 01 0105
PC133U-333-542
HYM7V73A1601 BTFG-75 BA-A
128MB Sync 133MHz CL3 ECC "

And:-

" 11S38L4011Z1JDPN12E03X FRU:33L3082
128M (16Mx72) 133MHz 3.3V SDRAM ECC
IBM OPT:38L3572 HYU102 "

Now this looked fairly close to another known good DIMM I had laying around, but my one does not seem to register when plugged in. It is labelled:-

"HYUNDAI KOREA 03
PC133U-333-542 0127
HYM76V16635HGT8-H E AA
128MB Sync 133MHz CL3 "

Is this because IBM PIII's use some obscure deviant RAM????

Hi,

The reason I asked was that some of the iron that IBM produced had proprietary hardware. Compac was another vendor that used special hardware.

The RAM in your IBM is ECC and you will have to purchased that type to match your existing RAM.

While everyone is recommending a distro for your old server, here is a simple media server deamon you can use. It is command line, but not difficult to use. The program is called GNUMP3D. Here is how simple it is to use.

Use your package manager to install the program. If not available for your distro then download the source code.

After installing the prgram either from source or from your distros' package database. As root, edit /etc/gnump3d/gnump3d.conf and search for the line root. Change the "root" variable so that it points to your music collection. Another line is port. The default port is 8888.
You can change this if you want to.

Next run /usr/bin/gnump3d-index

This will create a database of the music collection.

To start the daemon, type

gnump3d &

And you're done...

To test, open a web browser and enter the IP of the media server and port number. Example 192.168.1.100:8888

Now test again on another computer.

Click on a song or video and it will play.

- Hope this helps

PS: I recommend slackware for that old clunker.

Thanks for that onebuck, I'd been looking at:-

"PC133U-333-542"

And assuming that that was all that needed to match!!



DV502, how simple is Slackware? As previously mentioned, I am very simple!!
Is gnump3d available in slackware through a nice 'point and click' gui package manager? every time I've tried manual instals of anything I've ended up gibbering in the corner!!

I am for example, trying to get my on-board ATI radeon working on my desktop after switching from PCLOS07 to Fedora 9 - I gave up after 3 hours of sucessive failures last night!!