Byran,

Do you have a write up on how you set this up? I have another pizza box P4 system running Ubuntu. If I can scavenge more HDD, I may want to put together a similar system.

<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" /> remove ubuntu for xp? whatever for?

No, I think Bryan suggested running Linux box as a backup server or perhaps it's not even that sophisticated and instead is just a Linux server w/ storage attached that your windows boxes can be mapped to and therefore backup to. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

ahhh, i see, thread was getting long - was thinking clean install of xp on the ubuntu box...

LOL, I had to review it as well. I couldn't figure out who Byran was. Then I realized it was supposed to read Bryan. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

'Cest la vie!

No real writeup. With Ubuntu you will need to add the mdadm and samba packages. mdadm is for making and administering the RAIDs. samba is so windows can see the RAIDs as a remote volume. If you are doing Linux to Linux backup, then use the auto mounter and NFS for mounting the disks. I have mdadm and the kernel do all the RAID work rather than use a RAID controller as modern CPUs do the work faster. Also many RAID controllers are not supported in RAID mode under Linux. I'm such an old UNIX fart that I don't bother with the auto mounter and just use hard mounts and directly tweak the exports file. I also just edit the samba files directly or in the case of my last box I just copied them over and edited a couple of names in them. Ubuntu has a gui interface to configure samba. I have no clue how to use it or what it is called.

I thought SAMBA came with the Ubuntu version I installed. Not sure about Mdadm.

On the hardware side, did you get a RAID card for the SATA drives? If so, what was the name and cost? Just curious. I don't really need RAID for my home network, but I'd be interested on how to set one up.

If you ever have a RAID controller, you will wonder how you ever got along without it. I use a RAID 1 setup with a 3rd HDD used as the "off-site" backup - usually kept in my truck.... swap the #2 and #3 occasionally for use if I lose everything. It makes backup so very easy.

Frank

mdadm comes, but usually isn't loaded on a desktop install. You need to go into the package management program, on the system puldown menu, and install it. As for SAMBA, I think it was loaded. I know I loaded something for SAMBA, but it was an optional component.



My motherboard (nForce4 from ASUS) has 8 SATA connectors so no extra card needed on my Ubuntu box. On both of my Debian boxes I use PCI SATA cards from Promise. Both of them were cheap, under $50. They are just 4 port SATA cards that have Linux drivers. No RAID support in them.