Hey Slackerz, here's my question.

I just acquired a 1.5Tb Hdd which I am sticking in an old desktop to make a home net portal and server. I'd like to share files between the server and my various linux boxes, as well as my wife's XP and w7 laptops. For this I plan to use Samba. I'd also like to use the box as my media library, streaming video (using VLC?) I'm assuming if I can connect to the box over the home network I'll be able to read write and stream media files easily.

I'm also toying with the idea of installing Apache and hosting a website from the same box.

I'd also like to be able to ssh in remotely, and allow for sending files via ftp.

I've got the hardware set up, the drive is partitioned in to /, swap, and /home. I'm going in for a full Slackware 13.37 install, but from there I'm not sure exactly how to proceed.

Any advice, tips, warnings? Is this plan even feasible? All feedback is welcome.

Cheers!
-AtC

Slackware has all the tools you need for your setup. For streaming, you can try icecast and ices0 available from slackbuilds.org. For ftp, check out vsftp.

Before starting in earnest, make sure you can ping both ways with all machines.

Configure your server's NFS export file and then test connecting to those mount points. After testing modify the client fstabs.

When configuring Samba, be careful with little nuances such as preserving case, name mangling, etc.

If you are going to stream videos, consider a separate partition and using XFS. I use a separate partition and XFS on my HTPC. That file system handles large files much better than ext3/4.

For SSH, public keys are easier to work with than passwords. That also helps with any tasks you might want to automate through scripts.

Are you going to share printers from this machine? For the Windows machines you'll want to allow raw support and enable application/octet-stream in /etc/cups/mime.types. The Windows machines will print to a network printer share through Samba. With raw support CUPS will pass the data straight through.

Have you considered backups of all this precious data? I use a removable SATA drive bay for weekly backups and a fire-proof safe to hold the backup drive. SATA II supports hot swapping the disk without powering off the machine. I use a second internal drive to backup key user and system files. Should I cause my own headaches with any such file I can restore the file quickly right at the system. I run those backups every three hours. I use rsnapshot for both, which uses rsync and hard links to save a lot of storage space. I keep my video DVDs in a safe storage place and exclude those files from the backups to help save space. I can restore those disk images from the original DVD if necessary, although that never has happened.

I keep all of my video files on my HTPC owned by root:root. I have a directory for TV recordings and that is the only place normal users can delete files. Same with music files. You might want to do the same for most files except user files. Using root:root simply avoids fat finger problems.

For file sharing between your server and your Win7 machines, I would use (and indeed do use) minidlna. It works to stream stuff to Xbox and PS3. It's actually what the netgear stora uses for filesharing.

Actually, that's a copy of my own script ;-)
You can find the original at http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/minidlna/ and mind the ffmpeg dependency.

Works nicely, however I switched to mediatomb for the scripting abilities it has (I can not get minidlna to stream subtitle file (.srt) to my television. My kid needs the dutch subtitles). With mediatomb, I transcode the video on the fly file while streaming, imprinting the subtitle onto the video.

Eric

I actually just noticed that. Sorry eric.

Wow, thanks for the advice fellers! Lots to keep me busy over my spring break. Installing Slackware now...actually waiting for the disk to finish formatting. Went for a full format with bad sector checking on the home partition (1.3Tb), started yesterday afternoon, still hasn't finished yet. Starting to worry... Is this normal?

Formatting with bad sector check really can take a lot of time, especially on such large harddisks. I never use it, since modern drives are SMART-compatible and can easily be checked if they have found bad sectors in normal use.
Yes, this is normal.

Glad to hear that...next time I'll just quick format. Another quick question ... I'm planning to install the server between the modem and router. Good idea or bad?

Why are you trying to do that? What advantages will a setup like that have? I personally wouldn't do that, but may be I am missing a point here.

I saw a network diagram that was set up that way and figured that was the normal thing. Seems like it would increase load on the server though. I'd rather have everything communicating via the wireless router...I'll just plug it into the LAN and see where that gets me. If its finished formatting that is

One small thing.. I dearly hope you aren't using EXT4 for this partition. With disks over 500G or so EXT filesystems are terribly wasteful. I recommend using XFS. For my own uses all of my slackware installations are on EXT4 and all of my large storage disks/paritions are XFS.

Wouldn't you know it, Ext4 is exactly what I'm using. Not really up on the differences between file systems, and the installer defaults to Ext4 so I figured that would be fine. XFS is the way to go for large partitions? Would it hurt anything if I stopped the installer while its checking the disk and restart? (Still checking, BTW, almost 48 hours have elapsed...)

You'll need to start from scratch.. but assuming you choose XFS and no bad-block checking, formatting the file-system should take seconds only.

I think I'll give that a shot then. Tired of waiting for the damn partition to finish formatting. Keep you all posted on how things go...