Hi All

I'm looking into setting up a simple fileserver with an old box. I've decided to use linux mostly because I want something new to learn & play with. I've been a developer on MS platforms for almost 10 years, but I'm just a complete noob when it comes to linux.

One thing you learn going through life is that experience is almost always better than knowledge. I've found plenty of "how this works" type of info, but, I don't think that's very useful for a complete noob. I'll just fall into the usual traps that more experienced linux aficionados have learned to avoid. I really want to avoid the "you screwed up, reinstall" trap that seems to show up often on this board. I don't have the time to learn it from scratch...I need a bit of a running start if I'm going to figure this stuff out.

Anyway, what I'm looking for is a bit of handholding to get started. A nice step-by-step for a minimal fileserver setup. I figure if I learn the proper way to setup a solid, secure box, that would be a good foundation for learning more about linux. Is there anything out there like this?

Thanks.

You'll first have to decide whether you want a Linux-
native file-server, or to serve MS machines as well.

If there IS such a mentality around here it came/comes
with Windows refugees who learnt that from MS. If it
doesn't work, reboot. If the reboot doesn't fix it, reinstall.
I didn't have a reinstall on a few of my Linux machines
in years, updated on the fly (major version jumps without
a reboot).



Cheers,
Tink

It would need to serve WinXP machines


That may be the case, but it was the first impression I got when skimming through the newbie forum. I've read the 'uptime' stories from linux users, and I'm sure that someone that knows what he's doing can avoid rebooting/reinstalling. However, I don't know what I'm doing. At this point, I'm just as likely to hose up everything as I am to do something right.

I didn't mean to suggest anything about linux. I was just trying to saying that a) I don't know enough about it to just read a man page and understand what's going on, and b) I'm not in college anymore. I don't have the time, or desire to learn by smashing into walls, which really is the only way to learn if you have no guidance no matter how bright you are.

Anyway, sorry to drift off topic, can you point me in the right direction? Thanks.

first off i have found that if an install is done correctly
note: if it isn't its not exactly the fault of the user if the install isn't done correctly for the requiermeants as you possably don't know what you will want. the first thing i will reccommend if this is a home project is to possably install a little more stuff than you think you will need (including developmeant tools) as it is easy to not use something but harder sometimes to add things. although if the install is done properly then majour upgrades can be done seemlessly almost without notice.

if you are servering to XP machines then samba is probably the best server to run as it is the one designed to work with windows computers. samba server is the actual server.

what distribution are you using? your distro may have a graphical tool to help you configure samba (which may be more familiar to you, coming from windows).

it's not difficult though - i'm running mandrake 10, and i used the mandrake package installer (graphical) to install the samba package. then, i opened a text editor (i use vi from the command line but there are others) and edited the smb.conf file to match my network settings (workgroup name, directories that i wanted to share, etc). then just boot your xp machine, verify that the network settings are correct (both machines need ip addresses in the same subnet, or use DHCP), and open network neighborhood/my network places and view your workgroup.

this link was helpful to me - "the unofficial samba how-to":
http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/samba/install.html

there is a tool called swat that gives a web-based front end to your samba server (i only found it to be limitedly helpful - it's simple enough to edit the one config file), and a tool called LinNeighborhood that I have not tried yet but i believe acts like Network Neighborhood for use in viewing Windows shares from your Linux box.

I also keep the book "Running Linux" (4th edition, published by O'Reilly) by my side - it covered samba well, and has a broad range of topics along with good resources for further research on the web.

I am using Mandrake also.

Thanks for the info. I may have to take a trip to the bookstore to see if "Running Linux" is the intro that I'm looking for.

tbone2525,
Did you ever get it running?

I believe the link was changed to:

The Unofficial Samba HOWTO

Anyone that saved the info want to compare to this link??

-g