I use the term server very loosely because I built it on an Intel NUC with 8 gb ram and a celeron proc. But I am using it for learning. I have finally got CentOS 6.5 up and running and SSH. But I'd like recommendations on some things to do with it that would be good learning.

I want to mount my external USB drive and use it as a samba/nfs share as a home NAS.

I would also like to figure out how to host virtual machines because my laptop doesn't have virtualization built in and the the server does.

Any other obvious things I should try setting up as a noob?

(1) Set it up as a centralized backup system for all your other home PC's
(2) Set it up as a home fileserver (using Samba)
(3) Set it up as a webserver - learn Apache
(4) Set it up as a router/firewall for your other home computers - learn iptables
(5) Set it up as a personal "could server" (try "Owncloud" software or similar)
(6) Install VirtualBox and learn how to configure virtual machines
(7) Install and learn how to use LVM
(8) Install MythTV on it and turn it into a television/DVR

2 members found this post helpful.

If you have the hard drive space, DEFINITELY use it as a backup/syncing server. One can NEVER have too many backups. I use WinSCP to sync my Windows files with it, and so far I don't have any major complaints.

But other than that, I'm in the "Now what?" stage as well, although school limits the time I can spend on it.

Don't have much internal space. The computer I built uses mSATA drive so I used a 30gb ssd. I have 1 TB usb drive that I have connected and as long as I can mount that as a network drive I will be using that for back ups

What to do with it? Oh the possibilities are endless! Back in the day, I loved using it as a print server for my entire house. I hosted a website off of it. I gave myself major geek cred for running it headless and administering it remotely from my main desktop... which was so "remote" that the two computers sat next to each other. I also liked logging into my server from other locales like coffee shops, just to print a document that said "hello."

In short, do whatever you want with it! The sky is the limit- I hope you have fun with it.

A home server is great for use with your laptop out on some public WiFi hotspot. You set up an ssh tunnel/socks proxy on your laptop to tunnel everything - encrypted - to your home server and then out to the internet. This prevents the people providing the WiFi hotspot from snooping on your transmissions because they are encrypted. And it nullifies their blocking of some websites and ports because you only have one connection to your home server, on a port they don't block (heck - you could even run your home server ssh on port 80, or have your home router portforward incoming 80 to 22 on your server, since a WiFi hotspot certainly won't block port 80). Then it's your home server that forwards your traffic elsewhere.

There is really no setup on your home server, except getting SSH running on the port you have chosen (it doesn't have to be the standard port 22, since some WiFi hotspots may actually block this port). This is a great use for a home server. There are five bazillion tutorials on the web telling how to set this up. Just google a bunch of buzzwords like "ssh socks proxy tunnel dynamic port forward bypass firewall" and no doubt you'll get tons of hits.

Re Virtualisation; Centos/RHEL comes with KVM, so http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/centos-...tion-tutorial/

Thanks for great suggestions. This should keep me busy for a while

You could purchase your own domain name i.e. Ryanms3030.co.??, transfer it to a DNS hosting company, and setup a mail server - that's what I have done.

At home I have 2 Linux Servers.
1. Fedora 18 - combined Domain Mail & Webserver (for my externally accessible website), 2. Centos 6.50 - FTP Server. I am contemplating adding VPN connectivity to the FTP server.

Nothing like owning & hosting your own internet experience - it can be extremely frustrating at times but it is very rewarding.

The best way to learn is to have a particular target or goal that you are trying to achieve.

Regards,

Rawcous!!!

I have a share on my Debian home server (on a USB external drive which is mounted via UUID in fstab) that is mounted as a "U:\ drive" (that's a windows networking convention: U = "user") on my girlfriend's Windows 7 computer.

This sounds like a very useful idea. Does anyone have a link for a good tutorial on setting this up? I have googled and read about 6. But they all have different steps and the comments indicate the person doesn't know what they are talking about. That brings up another topic. there are millions of how tos on the internet about using linux but it seems tough to weed through the junk. A lot of stuff I find is on people's blogs who might be experts or might have learned one thing and in general know less then I do.

I didn't read the article, but I scanned through the one below and it looks good. Lots of screenshots to show you how to set this up using Putty SSH client, which is what most Windows laptops will be using.

http://www.anonyproz.com/sshtunnel.pdf

Basically, you institute an SSH connection to your server and set up "dynamic port forwarding". Then you configure your browser to use a SOCKS proxy that is running on your laptop (it's running due to the SSH dynamic port forwarding you set up). So it's a two step process: (1) Create and SSH connection, then (2) Use your browser tunneled over that connection.

This article shows how to do it with a Linux laptop:

http://www.slashroot.in/ssh-port-for...n-and-examples

Make sure you scroll down in this second article to the part about "dynamic port forwarding". That's what you want, not "local port forwarding".

p.s. - I didn't read either of these articles for correctness or completeness. I got Google hits for them, scanned then, and noted that at least they appear to cover the information required for setup.

Thanks. You must be better at google then me because I didn't get those links on the first two pages of my search

You can also use it as a torrent server, a DLNA server to stream movies or music to your TV, file server using rsync for Linux machines. can u put the hard drive inside the computer instead of having connected via USB?

Use it as a proxy if stuff is blocked at work
Buy a cool domain name and use it as a mail server, thus both wow-ing your friends and getting some more privacy.
All the stuff above.