What non-bloated minimalistic server-dist? Want Cool 'n Quiet to work
 

Hi :)

If I want a secure, non-bloated and minimalistic server-dist running just sshd, httpd, php, MySQL, and Samba....and this on a 3000+ with Cool 'n Quiet running, which one do I get? No X running, no 10 CD's loaded with crap that is enabled by default. Just the necessary (OpenBSD style that is, if possible).

And does it have to be a AMD64-version for Cool 'n Quiet to work, or can I grab any i386? I noticed some dists dont have any AMD64 version, or at least they are hard to find.

I need a dist with good Samba-speeds. I know the BSD's have some problems there, but hopefully Linux is better in general.
Need it to run on a somewhat exotic ASUS A8V-MX with some VIA-chipset on, but I guess most larger Linux-dists have good hardware support so....

Thanks

I've not tried it personally, but you could try Ubuntu server version. It's Ubuntu but without any of the X packages etc. Don't know if you'd need the 64-bit version, but unless you have a reason to need to use the 32-bit version I'd use the 64-bit one.

If you want something non-bloated, Slackware would be the obvious choice, but it is a pain to install and keep up to date, and the packages tend to be a little behind the times, which might cause problems with your hardware.

My personal experience with Asus has not been a positive one. The last computer I bought had a K8S-MX in it, and it was a year before I could install Linux on it as Asus wouldn't release the spec and it had to be reverse-engineered. I won't be buying anything from them again. There's a little info on your board with Linux in the LinuxQuestions.org HCL.

Thanks. Seems the board is about to be fully supported, and I dont have any SATA and dont need gfx or sound.

Slackware, well, I saw it didn't have any AMD64-version (from what I could tell) and also it comes on 5CD.

Just found out Arch (which I dont know anything about) and at least there seem to be a 64-bit version and also a "base-install" which is only a few hundred MB's, so maybe thats what I'm looking for....hard to tell :D
But I dont know how much of a hazzle it is to activate Cool 'n Quiet on it (or Linux in general), and still dont know if AMD64-versions is needed or i386 works fine. Someone somewhere told me to stay away from AMD64-versions but I dont know why.

Sad if you, as some people have stated, have to rebuild kernel and mess around like crazy to get a simple thing like Cool 'n Quiet to work. In windows you just install the driver and its up and running....

there is a distro called slamd that is slackware for a 64 bit system. Not used it much. You might also try to use gentoo as it is great for building a system made just or your machine.

Debian base install about 150 MB ... Isn't Cool & Quiet a BIOS issue?

I have Debian 64bit running on an Asus A8S-X board. That also uses the Via chipset, so that won't be a problem. The default install of Debian stable is as already mentioned around 150 Mb, and amd64 version for stable can be found here: http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/

Debian stable installs without X by default, and the net install image is only 150 Mb, and it will download anything else that it needs. Quiet and Cool should be enabled, this thread discusses it:
http://ocaoimh.ie/2005/03/13/linux-a...quiet-support/

The "minimalist" server choices are slackware, debian, arch, gentoo, LFS, and a few others. I don't know where you got that slackware was a 5 disk set, it is only 2, although you are right in that they don't have an "official" 64 bit port. i386 architecture will certainly install without a problem on a 64 bit system, it just won't have the ability to utilize the 64 bit memory space on the processor.

64 bit architecture can be difficult for a desktop machine, in particular getting flash to work can be exceedingly difficult/impossible. For a server however, I would not hesitate to install a 64bit OS. All it is going to do is crunch numbers, so having support for the added abilities of 64 vs. 32 bits will help.

As to samba, I don't understand what you mean by speed. How quickly other machines connect to it? That is more a function of the network than the individual machine. Since it is a server, get it wired into the network with a gigabit wired card. Wireless is far slower than wired 100 Mbps cards. Of course, if you have a gigabit card on the server, but plug it into a 100 Mbps switch hub, the gigabit is useless. There again, having the whole network connect at gigabit speeds is great, but does require gigabit cards and gigabit switches across the entire network.

Peace,
JimBass

[edit]The netinstall is only 100 Mb, so that works even better for you![/edit]

Debian Base install? Where do you find a disc like that? All I find is netinstall (which might be ok then I dont know how the installprocess works) and the 10CD set or however many they now are.

Regarding Slackware, looks like lots of discs to me but I dont know.
http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/slackw...ware-11.0-iso/

Regarding Cool 'n Quiet (or AMD Powernow which seems to be some other term for it) it seems to work on Linux, but if needed to recompile the kernel (instead of just installing a driver in Windows) I dont know if I'm able to fix it myself.

Regarding my Samba-experience with BSD, lets just say I get extremely slow transferspeeds, while if I install Windows on the server its normal again. I've had this discussion on many forums and noone knows whats wrong so lets just leave it to this, I want Linux now and not BSD, and hope it'll go better.

And Gentoo, I dont know, it seems very complex and you just compile and compile and compile. I think I'm after something a bit more simple.

A base-install of Debian (wherever it might be) or the netinstall, or maybe base of Arch (dont know anything about it) might be good.
Someone said Debian was kind of awkward, having strange unclear configfiles or whatever it was. I dont know...maybe its not very userfriendly for a newbie? Unclear and hard to handle? Arch better?

This is not typical of BSD. It's IP stack is as efficient as it gets.

Anyway, make your own custom install CD here:

http://www.instalinux.com/

Make it as big or small as you want.

Arch is nice and small but not well integrated. Debian\Ubuntu does have convoluted init scripts, but you shouldn't have to touch these. It's about as user friendly, as far as setting up basic services goes, as it gets.

Well I'm talking of my own experience with BSD...both FREE and Open, and on lots of different hardware.
Anyway, back to topic, what do you mean with Arch not well integrated?
I like the idea there is a AMD64 for Arch and also a very small base-install.
Someone said there were a base-install for Debian but I only found a ftp-install which was small and nice though so that might be what I'm looking for too.
I only hope Cool 'n Quiet is easy to install/activate/whatever you do, so I can keep the wattage/noise/heat as low as when Windows runs on the machine.

Oh, and I posted in the newbie forum to not get advices like building my own dist or shit like that :D

As with anything, try it before you speakly badly of it. You can go to the website and it will ask you basic questions one of which is what packages do you want to install. Then it will premake an ISO for you to download. The ISO will automatically install just what you told it too and nothing else. It's not a "gentoo-ish" "Rock Linux" freakshow. You can make your own tiny CD of quite a few popular distros like Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

Arch doesn't do any auto-setup of services or anything like that. It does what you tell it to and nothing else. Some think its good to be that way, I find it gets old after a while. That said, I run Arch on my home servers for most of the same reasons you are too. It's small and moderately fast. I run Samba for file storage and thats it.

I gave you a link in my last post to the page on debian.org that has the 100 Mb disk to install the amd64 version of debian stable. All netinstall does is only builds enough of a system to get the hardware online to download any/everything else that you tell it you want. The beauty of that is that you get the most current packages for that version, and also, you don't waste time and bandwidth downloading things you never will use, like the x-window-system in your case.

Slackware just released version 11.0 days ago. For the vast majority of users, only the first 3 disks would be necessary for install. The 4th through 6th disks contain source packages, if you wanted to build your own binaries that have non-standard configurations. That is similiar to a "roll your own" approach, ala LFS, Arch, or something like that.

Quiet and cool is quite likely to work out of the box. Linux has been very good for a long time at minimizing the amount of memory and system resources that it uses. Other OSes (particularly the kind that uses .exe files) tend to only operate at full power 100% of the time.

I find Debian intuitive, but I have using it for a while. Any distro has quirks, like things in unexpected places. The people who wrote that debian was hard probably were used to a linux that was set up differently, which is no better or worse, just different.

Managing a server is probably not a good way to start out with linux. The fact that you have done BSD previously and don't want X on this box seems encouraging, but the idea that compiling a kernel would scare you off makes me think a customized samba server might be a bit much to start off with. Not impossible by any means, but it isn't the point here, click there, and have everything behave experience it sounds like you are looking for.

You also seem to be asking for advanced features, like a 64 bit OS , and minimal packages (small install media), but then you want everything to just work. You do see that those two things tend to be at odds with one another? There is no right choice that we can make for you. People all have opinions on distros, but ultimately, you are the one who has to put the CD in the tray, install the system, configure it, and use it. Try something, anything, and then if it doesn't work, tell us what it was about it that you didn't like. What you are doing here is somewhat similiar to a 16 year old asking what girl he should get married to, before he begins dating! Check things out, see what you like and don't like, and then you're in a better position to know more about what you are looking for, and how you want it to behave.

Peace,
JimBass

Thanks for all your help.
I want something like OpenBSD....BUT, with working Samba (I've never got good speeds from Samba on any BSD or any hardware, and noone has managed to help me fix it...I've tried lots of tweaks in smb.conf and windowsizes for TCP and other stuff).

Anyway, OpenBSD, if you aren't familiar with it, does a very nice minimalistic install of just what you need, AND, it works. I dont have to recompile kernels, I just very easily install the packages I need (like Apache or Samba) and its up and running.
I dont get why dists like this shouldn't exist for Linux. Thats why I asked, if there were any Linux-serverdist that behaved/installed that way, and it seems Debian or Arch might be something to try out then.

I think I'm gonna try Arch first, since at least their AMD64 is stable and official. Debians seem to be some testplatform for now....not sure how good the 64-bit is there.
Only downside is I'm looking around but cant find where the packages are for Arch. You're supposed to put mirrors in the pacman.conf (Arch's packagemanager) I guess, but I dont find any mirrors to packages anywhere :D

Don't know about 64-bit, but the shipped pacman.conf is fine in 32-bit.
Have had to re-order it once (on a vm client) to get decent response, but on standard install it works fine.

Good fast distro - and minimal in the extreme. Appeals to the gentoo user in me...;)

That is the case with all linux distros. Software, like samba or apache will work just without touching the kernel. When you need to change the way the OS interacts with the hardware, then it becomes kernel time. Often it can be as simple as installing a kernel module for new hardware, and if you have the full kernel sources, you don't need to compile a new kernel, just add modules to the already existing one.

As for the stability of Debian, it comes in 3 flavors. They make unstable (sid), testing (etch) and stable (sarge). When a new version of software is released, it is put in unstable asap. If it survives that (no major bugs for a set period of time), it gets included in testing as well. Same dseal there, they have a much monger time where it is tested, and the code is checked in some way. If the software still works, it will finally get included in stable. It usually takes a year to 18 months for software to make stable, which is why it has that name, and is intended for servers where latest and greatest isn't necessary, but uptime/functionality is.

So don't let testing fool you. It isn't the bleeding edge (unstable is), and testing is probably more stable than most distros main version. Stable is often considered old, as it has all old software. I gave you the link for the stable version of amd64. In December, they are going to move all the distros, so sarge will be thrown out of the mix, etch will move to stable, and what is now sid will slide down to testing. AMD64 is already fully working for stable, and it will become an "official" part of the distro with the change in December. If you were to install it today, you would never encounter a problem with it.

Peace,
JimBass

One other note, I am in the middle of compiling the 2.6.18-1 kernel that came out today, and I see in Power Management Options -> CPU Frequency Scaling -> AMD Operton/Athlon64 Power Now! I had already had it in my previous kernels as a module, and I didn't put it in there myself, the default installation of Debian testing for AMD did. Current Debian Stable comes with the choice of a 2.4.27 kernel or 2.6.8. I am not sure when the Power Now was added to the kernel, but if you went with testing for the install then dist-upgraded to sarge, you'd have it in your kernel automatically with no recompile needed.

Peace,
JimBass