Need Some Linux Advice Please

[endure]

I've been given an old PC with a 1Ghz processor, 1Gb of memory and a 100GB drive although I have other, larger drives knocking around that I could use.

I'd like to set it up as a server orientated linux machine so that I can diddle around with Apache, Wordpress etc. Bearing in mind that the last time I did any serious CLI stuff was with Netware 2 what's the best distro for me? Are there any GUI admin tools for Apache etc?

[justsumhelp]

Just browse distrowatch.com The biggest problem you may face is getting the router to support letting the outside world in, and then if you become popular enough the ISP

[endure]

I don't want to make it public although my router runs DD-WRT so I wouldn't imagine it would be too difficult. I just want my own private little hosting site to fiddle with. I see that there are at least 100 distros on distrowatch which is why I'm asking for recommendations

[JimShortz]

The obvious choice (the most popular) is Ubuntu. I would also recommend that you consider Mint.

[Richard-BKK]

Ubuntu and Mint are great distributions for the desktop, but starting a web server and learning something useful, you better start with something more server orientated distribution. You can find enough enterprise-class Linux Distributions around, but I would suggest that you look seriously at Centos Enterprise Server... it's free has great community service and works basically the same a the famous RedHat Enterprise Server which lots of web-hosting companies use...

[dharmabm]

Ubuntu and Mint are great distributions for the desktop, but starting a web server and learning something useful, you better start with something more server orientated distribution. You can find enough enterprise-class Linux Distributions around, but I would suggest that you look seriously at Centos Enterprise Server... it's free has great community service and works basically the same a the famous RedHat Enterprise Server which lots of web-hosting companies use...

i would second this suggestion, only adding that another good choice would be debian, which is the upstream source of both ubuntu and mint (along with many others). a rock-solid distro with a huge amount of resources for documentation, and widely used in server situations. it does require a bit more administration knowledge, so depending on your experience centos may be a better out-of-the-box solution. 2 other server oriented distros that i have played with are smeserver (which is based on centos) and zentyal (formerly ebox and ubuntu based) which are both designed as complete out-of-the-box servers for small businesses with limited IT experience and resources, everything is managed through GUI tools. probably not what you want if you just want a webserver, but decent options nonetheless. try them all out in virtualbox before you decide, or if you put a bigger drive in you can always multiboot a few until you figure out what you want. oh, and if you want external access just register a free name with dyndns.org and use DDNS on your router to update your DNS when your IP changes. also, there are numerous admin tools for apache, but if you are just doing development testing (and maybe using php and/or sql) you might want to look at the XAMPP package from http://www.apachefri...g/en/index.html there is a good description of what it is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAMPP but be advised it is VERY insecure by default (by design, as it is only intended as a testing tool)

k

ps. did you hack your router or did it come with DD-WRT? if you hacked it yourself you should have no trouble entering the linux world. i have a linksys hacked with DD-WRT and an iPod running rockbox, i love turning proprietary systems on their heads! ;>}

Edited September 22, 2011 by dharmabm

[dharmabm]

since it appears to be too late to edit my original post, i need to amend a few things. i just did a little research and found that - #1 - smeserver has not been updated for over a year, so i wouldn't bother. - #2 - centos (as i now recall from my most recent experiment, which admittedly was probably 3 years ago or more) has TERRIBLE documentation, and their website is almost impossible to find what you need from (like is the current stable version 5.6 or 6.0?). so i would suggest going with debian, for a simple server used only for web development you cannot go wrong, and documentation is easy to find. i have to admit though that i am currently using ubuntu server at home at the moment, primarily because i have installed it for a few clients and need a similar environment for testing purposes. if i were setting up my own ideal environment from scratch i would probably use arch (which is my current desktop of choice), but i wouldn't recommend that to someone with little experience in linux.

[endure]

I know it's not Linux but what about some flavour of BSD?

[justsumhelp]

I personally find penguins cuter than devils

I know it's not Linux but what about some flavour of BSD?

[endure]

I've since discovered why I was given the PC. It's a heap of dung. It won't boot 25% of the time no matter what it's running.

I was looking round and found that HP are offering a £100 cashback on their Proliant Microserver - a tiny little thing with 4 x 3.5 SATA internal drive bays and a 5.25 external bay. It comes with 1GB of memory and a 250GB drive by default. I ordered one yesterday - it arrived this morning and was running Solaris 11 40 minutes later. It's got an internal USB connector so it's possible to install an O/S on a USB stick and boot from that. It's almost completely silent and it's built like a Proliant should be - albeit not as tough as a 7000. It cost (after cashback) 6500BT and it's brilliant!

I'm going to try some Open Source stuff on it but Windows Home Sever is only 40 quid (2000BT) over here.

I was going to buy a Synology NAS but I'd glad I saw the cashback offer

[Guest]

I've since discovered why I was given the PC. It's a heap of dung. It won't boot 25% of the time no matter what it's running.

I was looking round and found that HP are offering a £100 cashback on their Proliant Microserver - a tiny little thing with 4 x 3.5 SATA internal drive bays and a 5.25 external bay. It comes with 1GB of memory and a 250GB drive by default. I ordered one yesterday - it arrived this morning and was running Solaris 11 40 minutes later. It's got an internal USB connector so it's possible to install an O/S on a USB stick and boot from that. It's almost completely silent and it's built like a Proliant should be - albeit not as tough as a 7000. It cost (after cashback) 6500BT and it's brilliant!

Wow. That proliant server sounds like a great deal. Where did you order it from, directly from HP?

[hkt83100]

I was going to buy a Synology NAS but I'd glad I saw the cashback offer

i got a DS211j here, with 2 x 2TB. It running great and you won't need more to run your webserver. It comes with Apache, Perl, PHP, MySQL, what else do you need? There are zillions of programs available in the repository, see attachment.

P.S.: Attachment was not accepted: Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file

P.P.S.: It works great as DLNA-Server, too...

Edited September 25, 2011 by hkt83100

[Tywais]

P.S.: Attachment was not accepted: Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file

What was the attachment file type (extension)? If image than convert to .jpg.

[endure]

I've since discovered why I was given the PC. It's a heap of dung. It won't boot 25% of the time no matter what it's running.

I was looking round and found that HP are offering a £100 cashback on their Proliant Microserver - a tiny little thing with 4 x 3.5 SATA internal drive bays and a 5.25 external bay. It comes with 1GB of memory and a 250GB drive by default. I ordered one yesterday - it arrived this morning and was running Solaris 11 40 minutes later. It's got an internal USB connector so it's possible to install an O/S on a USB stick and boot from that. It's almost completely silent and it's built like a Proliant should be - albeit not as tough as a 7000. It cost (after cashback) 6500BT and it's brilliant!

Wow. That proliant server sounds like a great deal. Where did you order it from, directly from HP?

It's on offer in the UK. If you're here you can get one from ebuyer.com. The offer ends on 30 September.

[endure]

I was going to buy a Synology NAS but I'd glad I saw the cashback offer

i got a DS211j here, with 2 x 2TB. It running great and you won't need more to run your webserver. It comes with Apache, Perl, PHP, MySQL, what else do you need? There are zillions of programs available in the repository, see attachment.

P.S.: Attachment was not accepted: Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file

P.P.S.: It works great as DLNA-Server, too...

That's the model I was looking at. It was a very tough call.

[Crushdepth]

A linux-based NAS box is great if you want to have a server appliance that offers you heaps of cool functionality with little messing about (I love my QNAP, it's incredibly useful). But they aren't a good choice if your aim is to learn linux, in that case you'd be better off downloading a distro and playing with it.

If you do get a NAS, running a public website on it (AKA exposing it to the internet) is not a great idea if you also want to store important personal data on it.

[endure]

It's a shame that Synology don't have a version of their DSM that runs on any old linux box.

[urandom]

and their website is almost impossible to find what you need from (like is the current stable version 5.6 or 6.0?)

just FTR, it is not uncommon for linux or BSD "production distros" to support several stable branches. not all companies like to be bleeding edge / go through upgrade testing and audit / have any downtime. oh and yes, I know, not being bleeding edge will sound like an insult to an archer like you

[endure]

So far I've tried:

Solaris Express 11 which quite impressed me.

Ubuntu Desktop which was a bit too gaudy.

Ubuntu Server which was CLI only - a bit daunting for a noob. I used to do quite a lot of CLI stuff but it was on Netware and it's a long time ago

Centos which was also quite impressive

Fedora 14 as part of the Amahi project which I thought might be ok but it's a bit too pre-packaged.

I've yet to try Windows Home Server which is based on Server 2008. I've also read on a forum that Windows 7 Ultimate is a bit of a flier with enough memory.

I've read about Vmware ESXI which apparently turns the box into a virtual server at the hardware level. Needs more memory as well.

It's neat to have a machine to diddle about with apart from one I use every day - good fun.

[justsumhelp]

Just a question, what are you wanting that your router can't provide?

[endure]

Entertainment

I want a machine that I can run my own little internal website on with an AMP stack of some sort and Wordpress to play around with. I also want whatever drives I eventually stick in it to be available to my other machines. I'd like a torrent client that doesn't run on my desktop and I'd also like secure access from the outside.

I've also got 3 external USB and 1 external Esata drives that I'd like to hang off it.

I want to learn how to do these things without my brain exploding.

Windows is familiar - Linux, Unix and Solaris aren't. So far if I were to choose a Unix variant it would be Solaris. It just fell onto the machine with no grief at all whereas all the Linuxes needed either diddling around with or consulting the oracle (pun not intended).

[urandom]

Thanks to oracle, opensolaris is pretty much a dead project, you should look at its open source fork: http://openindiana.org/

if you're not into CLI but want to try some FreeBSD flavor, you could try PC-BSD [ http://www.pcbsd.org/ ]

also justsumhelp is right, anything you want to do can be done with your router.

safe bet for a lamp server: debian stable.

what you should use (only if you like reading manuals): openbsd

[endure]

What's the difference between Opensolaris and Solaris Express 11? I'm not looking to hop from version to version but rather to find an O/S that I like and stick with it.

I'm not sure I understand the remarks about my router. It can't run a website nor a Wordpress blog. It's a standard D-Link running DD-WRT.

[urandom]

What's the difference between Opensolaris and Solaris Express 11? I'm not looking to hop from version to version but rather to find an O/S that I like and stick with it.

edit: effin' link formatting. both projects are dead. one is the closed source binary of the other.

I'm not sure I understand the remarks about my router. It can't run a website nor a Wordpress blog. It's a standard D-Link running DD-WRT.

look at what you can run on your router: http://ipkg.nslu2-li...t/cross/stable/

i can see apache, mysql and php, some bittorrent clients and well, a lot of stuff.

Edited September 29, 2011 by urandom

[endure]

Problem is that my router has 15MB free and no USB ports. Besides I'd rather leave it sitting in a corner to do its job without interference.

Thanks for pointing me towards Openindiana.