Creating a Linux file server
 

Hey everone a friend of mine has offered me old pc. (anywhere from a 486 to a 233) and i would like to turn it into a file server. I know there are alot of great small linux distros that are great for specific things. BBI agent is a linux distro that runs off a floppy and can serve as a internet router using a old pc. I was wondering what would be a good distro to use for this task? I am pretty much a linux n00b. I have the following OS's that would be accessing this server

In no specific order
Windows 98Se
Windows 2000 Pro Sp4
Windows xp home SP1
Red hat 8
Possible Suse 9

If you need any more info let me know. Thanks

If the computer he is giving you is a 486 to a 233, you can rule out just about anything linux with a gui, and none of those microsoft products will run reliably, if at all. (well 98se would run ok but it's networking capabilities are weak.)

yeah i know, i have a old copy of win 95 around but that isnt installed. I know BBI agent doenst have a GUI you set it up like a boot disk from windows and then just throw that in there. I was wondering if such a thing existed for a file server. I dont expect much form this thing, i knew a 486 couldnt run any GUI. KDE is hard enough fior my 500 Mhz on my spare pc.

I don't think you are going to be doing yourself any favors by setting up a file server on something that slow. Unless you by an IDE controller and new hard drive.

yeah i thought of that, with the limitations of the mobo i would need a controler in order to get a decent size drive in it. This thing is rather useless other then being a router huh

Wow....
I have used Linux ( RH9 ) with full GUI (GNOME) on a 166MHz PC 128Mb RAM and a 30Gb HardDisk It is not very fast but, it was not painfull either. I used this PC with dual boot with W98 for more than 2 years very happely.
If you do not plan on compiling kernels or something else that is leaning hevely on the processor time it won't be a problem to set-up a server with it.
Since a dedicated server doesn't need a GUI, you can save lots of diskspace by not installing the GUI. File servers don't need to be very fast either if it does not do anything else.

Rolf

now sure if im good enough to set one up without a GUI hehe. But thanks for the input. I have Mdk 9.1, RH9 and RH8,. Not including knoppix and lindows live cd. Ill have to see what i can rig up, ill try and find out the exact specs.