Hey everyone, i have an old computer downstairs (pentium 2 MMX, 5 gb HD, 64 meg RAM) etc... What distro would be best to make a server? Are there any tutorials out there to read to make one? I am not new to computers, and i have set up a slackware box back in the day (with lots of headaches... although it did work haha). So i'm not totally inept, however i have no clue how to set up a server! (file sharing, printer sharing, net page hosting maybe?). Thank you everyone!

As long as you resist any temptation to go for X, almost everything will work. I recommend Debian, but that's more out of habit. I ran Debian (Sarge and Etch) GUI-less on a box that was very similar to yours, and it worked nicely. You may want to use a special kernel for a box that old, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem. I've just today seen a kernel for older systems on Freshmeat, but I didn't note any details, so you'll have to search for yourself.

Beware that if you're intending to put a lot of load on that server you'll most certainly not be too happy with the little RAM you have. OTOH, if you're planning to have a home server for files and testing (no streaming!) you'll probably like it a lot.

There are also even more dedicated systems out there, but I've limited experience. I set up an OpenBSD box as a server once, but the learning curve was pretty steep. Sticking to Debian (or Slackware, for the matter) will help things a lot.

M.

hey thank you for the reply, is there some kind of tutorial for setting up a linux server? I don't think i'll be doing streaming... this is more of a personal experiment type thing for my family! (well more for me... lol!)

I would suggest debian etch or lenny, do a base net install and unselect everything. Then begin by adding the individual packages you need and want, that will keep your install to a bare minimum.

There are a lot of good tutorials out there, but we would need to know what kind of server you're planning on using this as.

What type of file server (NFS, Samba, etc) and lighttpd would probably be a good option for web services. I would suggest checking out http://www.debian-administration.org/ they have good tutorials for just about everything and it's all relative to debian. I've also seen a lot of well written accurate tutorials on HowToForge.

I have two Pentium MMX processor based servers running as firewall/gateways with printer sharing using CUPS and file sharing using Samba.
One (with 64MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive) is servicing two XP boxes, a Win98 box, a Win 3.1 box and a DOS 6.2 box.
The other (with 128MB RAM and a 4GB primary partition) is servicing three XP boxes, three WIN NT4 boxes and a W2K box. I found needed to upgrade from 64MB to 128MB RAM on this box when I added an XP machine to the setup recently.
The servers are both running Slackware 12.1 with the single processor kernel. I do not load KDE as a) it takes up too much disk space and b) it is slooow!
I have a light window manager available (I use WindowMaker) so that I can use the web browser interface to CUPS if required, but most of my administration is done at the command line.

I took a look at Ubuntu server edition, would that work too?

Sure, but it comes "fully-blown" (no GUI, at least). That means that you'll have a lot of services ("servers" - server applications, rather) running by default. OTOH, it's very easy to install. rweaver's suggestion is very sound, including the tips for tutorials he gives. You can also use Debian's net-install and then check first the "server" usage and after that the server packages you want installed. You'll end up with standard choices though, which can be a bit on the heavy (duty) side (apache and exim4 are great, but are denizens compared to lighter choices like lighttpd and postfix) for such an experiment. It'd work, anyway.

M.

Yes, but as you don't have an abundance of hard drive space you won't have much room for being a file server.

Just about any distribution can make an excellent server, but on older hardware with limited space you should probably look at distributions that provide only the packages you require to maximize space available for everything else.

Debian would be my first choice because I like the package management system and it functions very well without a gui and you don't get extra things you don't need. Slackware would fall next for me personally and then CentOS.

Ubuntu server edition is a good product, but I don't think it's the best product for the application you're describing.

Ok perfect, thanks for the info guys!

p.s.... how many cds of debian do i have to dload... i figured one or two since i'm gonna be limited on space already, although i can probably connect my computer to the net (dsl)...

Just the net install.

http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

I would recommend the 180mb i386 version as a starting point, you can always add more packages.