Hi, I have a computer lying around here and decided to turn it into a server. I installed Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 and was wondering what software would be best for it. I already have some software in mind but wanted to know if anyone here has a better aproach to my needs.

I wanted it to serve as:
-HTTP server; Apache
-File server for other computers on the network; Samba
-Streaming music server; SubSonic
-DHCP server; dhcpd3
-Proxy; Squid
-Firewall; ???
-DNS server for local network name resolution; ??
-Image gallery server; Some php application running on top of Apache ??
-FTP server; ??
-VOIP PABX; Asterisk

And eventually something else...
I would really appreciate any suggestions regarding all this software. Are they compatible? (all of them together breaking the system)

What special care should I take on configuring it all, taking into account that I'll be using two ethernet cards (LAN & WAN)?

Also the DNS part seems really tricky to me, as my needs are to resolve network names in my network.. (I can't ping any computer by name and file sharing becomes difficult)... I'm going to need some help.

Well, thats it... Thanks in advance

IMO if you are looking for a server I would install Ubuntu server, if your needing the GUI then Desktop is probably the way to go but I have an older box running server and it has been working very well so far. I may be wrong and if I am someone please say something but Pfsence can do a lot of what your asking for. also on a side note I have never been able to get an Asterisk server running on anything but the install from there cd, could be just me but theres my two cents

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I'm going to need the GUI to run a softphone and maybe someday a mythtv frontend... maybe...

I looked over to PfSense and it really has a lot of features which are useful for a Firewall/router pc and that made me curious about the hardware youre running your server. How old is that box of yours?

And as you already have a server pc, are you using more than one ethernet card? How is name resolution done on your network?

Are these servers meant for your LAN only, or for access from outside your network? If they are LAN only, I'd be tempted to get a separate firewall/router for your network, preferably one that you could replace the firmware with OpenWRT - which would give you local DNS and DHCP, as well as tons of other features. I'm not a big fan of putting everything on one box unless you sandbox stuff. It's too much of a security risk in my opinion. I'd put external servers in a DMZ and internal servers on the LAN, unable to be accessed from outside.

Firewall - I use fwbuilder to construct the iptables rules. It's really flexible and lets me build firewalls for desktops or even my Linksys WRT54G router.
ftp - I use proftp and it works fine. But I've found that I don't use it for much now.
mythtv is great. I have a frontend/backend box on my network as well as a dedicated frontend.

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Hi pljvaldez, thanks for replying.

For now I'll be having only 1 server. This server main purpose is to share files to 4 computers in my LAN. It will also serve HTTP content so I can host my own webpages. (Actually this is really a sandbox server, except for the file sharing part which holds important documents, music and photos). The only external access to this server will be HTTP, FTP and SSH. My main issue at home is not having a working name resolution system and having duplicate files over all my computers... I want to centralize them.

I have heard of OpenWRT but never had a supported router. I wonder if you can have arbitrary software running on it. (I develop automation software which must reside in a central and accessible server)

Thanks for the software sugestions. I'll look into those tools.
Going a little off topic, what kind of tuner do you use on your mythtv box? (analog/digital, DVB/ATSC ?)

I've got an old Hauppauge PVR-150. I built the box in 2005 and at the time Hauppauge was well supported in the kernel. In retrospect, I only wish I had gotten a multi-tuner card so I could record more than one show at a time. There have been times my wife's taste and my taste clash. Usually I bend and record her stuff. But it hasn't been enough of an issue for me to spend the money on a dual tuner card.

My frontend is not a true Mythtv frontend. Instead I transcode the video to mp4 so that my Roku box can stream it over http.

Could you provide us with the OEM system Specifications. You nknow processorspeed, Memory amount, Diskspace. ight i also suggest that with these work loads you plan to lay on this machine.