Ok, I was all set to ask some questions regarding the best way to partition the file/ftp server that I wanted to set up, but I saw a post that said that Fedora core 3 is not recommended for a file server setup, so I figured I would solve that issue first. I was planning to use Fedora core 5 for my server, does this change anything? Is it more suited for a file server now that it has seen a few updates?
I'll get to my other questions after this one as they are partially Fedora related and partially not. If Fedora is not recommeded as an appropriate distro, then the questions become moot.

Thanks.

Hi,

Fedora is not usually recommended for use as a server, as it is more cutting edge than most server specific distributions. Having said that, it is perfectly capable of doing the tasks you ask.

Is this to be set up as a home server? Or is this for work?

If it is for work, I would look at using RedHat Enterprise 4, or if you do not require the support, then use CentOS which is a non-commercial rebuild of RedHat enterprise Linux.

As for the partitioning, this really depends on the load you expect to place on the server. Will you have hundreds accessing it at one time? How much data will they be pulling?

To give you a example, in the corporate world, you would normally configure a server to boot the operating system off from a mirrored drive pair. The data would be stored on either a RAID 5 set of disks, or would have a HBA card connected to a SAN (Storage Area Network).

Regards

Richard.

Hi youngri, thanks for the reply,

This is to be for a home installation and will be used primarily for backup purposes on my LAN (mostly windows boxes). I had also hoped to configure it as a web server and as a ftp server, but these two needs are only because I want the practice. They would hardly ever be used beyond the initial setup and configuration.

As far as partitioning, I have a 6 GB hdd that was for the primary installation and 2-250 GB hdd to be set up for storage. (considering RAID).

I'm not opposed to using another distro, nor do I have any preference for Fedora, but I would rather do this right from the start as opposed to somewhere in the middle.

Thanks

Ok, nobody else has replied yet, so I'll continue on with my original line of questioning. I'll just assume for now that I'll stick with Fedora for this server.

Goal: to set up a file server that will be used in an otherwise Windows environment. I have a 6.2ish GB hdd and 2- 250 GB hdd. The 2-250 GB hdd's are to be set up as redundant file storage (RAID?).
Here are (some of) the questions I have:
1. When I use the two 250 GB hdd's, will they fall prey to the 137GB limitation that pre windows XP SP1 OS has? Not that I have too many boxes that fall into that category, but I don't want to take the chance.
2. When I run qtparted, and select hdd (my 6.2 GB with Linux on it), no problem. When I select hda (1 of my 250 GB), no problem, however, selecting hdb (my other 250 GB) causes qtparted to crash. Why is this? hda is an ntfs drive and has no problems, hdb is ntfs but crashes the app.?
3. In regards to setting up this box as a file server, what packages do I need to make sure are on this machine?

more questions to come.

thanks.

*heartbeat*

Ok, new info:

In qtparted, the two 250GB hard drives show as "unknown" file type, whereas in fdisk, they show as "HPFS/NTFS". I'm prepared to believe fdisk in the matter. However, when I try to access the drives from a windows pc on my network, I can see the drives but they are "unaccessable". I think I have all permissions on the linux box wide open for testing purposes. Any idea what I'm doing wrong or what my next step should be?