Little server at home...

[Richard-BKK]

I'm in the middle of setting up a small Internet server at home. Basically for a bit file-sharing and maybe run a little website from it for family and friends (surely not commercial).

At the moment I have installed Ubuntu Server 13.10 and it works but for most other computer I use Fedora so I thinking to change. For now Ubuntu Server 13.10 does everything it needs to do and I have basically nothing to complain.

The server a Asus H61M-A/USB3 with a Intel Pentium G2120 processor and 4GB DDR3/1333 memory (total cost was 5,070 THB). I still had two 320GB hard drives and a old but still good looking case, the little server doesn't use a monitor, keyboard or mouse....

The only thing is that I cannot figure out how to FTP into /var/www/ being allowed to save or delete files. Yes, I can make the folder 777 but that is a insane security idea. At the moment I made it possible that the PHP scripts can upload files and create folders...

I have it a bit busy so not much time to figure it out during the day... free time is limited....

[dharmabm]

is this only for yourself (or other local users), or do you need external access as well? assuming the first, you need to add your local user to the www-data group

sudo useradd -G www-data {username}

i think this should be enough, but i don't use FTP on any of my servers. with more details about what FTPd software you are using i could offer further advice.

if you are using vsftpd (which i strongly recommend) you need to change write_enable=NO to yes in /etc/vsftpd.conf

the full docs for vsftpd on ubuntu server 13.10 can be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/13.10/serverguide/ftp-server.html

i am curious, what case and power supply are you using? where did you buy the parts, did you get them locally? i recently bought a zbox ID18 which total cost was about the same (just the mini-pc and memory, i had an old HD laying around already) and i absolutely LOVE the form factor and power, though your specs are much higher than mine.i would really like to build another one from scratch but haven't seen the parts available locally.

[JSixpack]

i recently bought a zbox ID18 . . . and i absolutely LOVE the form factor and power . . . i would really like to build another one from scratch . . . .

Think Raspberry Pi:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Raspberry-Pi-Web-Server

[dharmabm]

i recently bought a zbox ID18 . . . and i absolutely LOVE the form factor and power . . . i would really like to build another one from scratch . . . .

Think Raspberry Pi:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Raspberry-Pi-Web-Server

already have one (i guess you missed that thread? )

the pi is fun, but the zbox has dual core processor, up to 16gb memory and gigabit ethernet. i am running an nfs server (for my xbian raspi media) and several virtual machines with 2gb memory allocated to each. these little boxes have incredible processing power and incredibly low power consumption, and for the price they just can't be beat (not to mention the whole thing is the size of a large ashtray) i'm even thinking of setting one up in my factory to use as a VM server, to run my nagios/multisite monitoring and other testing systems that i currently run on my desktop. plus,, with the right case, i think i can finally build that freenas box i've been dreaming about for under 10,000 baht!

[Richard-BKK]

I agree with dharmabm, the Raspberry is fun for a bit of basic after work hobby. But if you want a bit more out of the little home server a bit more processor power is needed.

The Intel Pentium G2030 (socket 1155, 3Ghz) with the 4GB memory and gigabit Ethernet interface offers that bit more power. Another thing that I found is that you can find much more projects that support the general x86_64 arch than what you can find for the ARM version.

I actually bought the mainboard, processor and memory with the idea that if I would be bored or it would not work to my satisfaction I could always use the parts for a small data entry computer system.

But at the moment I'm having a good bit of fun with the little home server. For the computer case I use an old mini-tower which lost the front-face plastic and I just turn it on and off with a microswitch I clued on the front... Also clued a LED so I can see HDD activity.

But I guess I will buy this weekend a more attractive case for my little server...

[RKASA]

If it is a local headless server then install team viewer and you can remote it to any other PC and run the server from your desktop like an app. At home or away. It will fully display the servers desktop and you can do root process. You can then just have it download stuff from your PC i.e. transfer the file into var/ as root., or even have it download the file from another internet source and then do with it what you like. The free version will do what you want. It remotes the missing display and keyboard to your other PC you will even have your mouse working. No need of up loading anything really you can work everything from the hardware via complete remote interface.

[dharmabm]

If it is a local headless server then install team viewer and you can remote it to any other PC and run the server from your desktop like an app. At home or away. It will fully display the servers desktop and you can do root process. You can then just have it download stuff from your PC i.e. transfer the file into var/ as root., or even have it download the file from another internet source and then do with it what you like. The free version will do what you want. It remotes the missing display and keyboard to your other PC you will even have your mouse working. No need of up loading anything really you can work everything from the hardware via complete remote interface.

can teamviewer run over ssh tunnel? i just use tsvnc for this

[RKASA]

If it is a local headless server then install team viewer and you can remote it to any other PC and run the server from your desktop like an app. At home or away. It will fully display the servers desktop and you can do root process. You can then just have it download stuff from your PC i.e. transfer the file into var/ as root., or even have it download the file from another internet source and then do with it what you like. The free version will do what you want. It remotes the missing display and keyboard to your other PC you will even have your mouse working. No need of up loading anything really you can work everything from the hardware via complete remote interface.

can teamviewer run over ssh tunnel? i just use tsvnc for this

TeamViewer is a highly secure remote maintenance solution. Your connections are established via fully encrypted data channels using 1024-bit RSA key exchange and 256-bit AES session encoding.

edit PS it has a smart LAN detect so if both PC and server are on the same LAN it overrides internet and uses the LAN directly.

Edited November 20, 2013 by RKASA

[Richard-BKK]

I have a small, bit annoying, problem with my little home server.. The things is that apparently because I have no keyboard or mouse connected the mainboard generates an error. I set the BIOS to ignore all errors, but I now found out that the Asus mainboard go's back to default settings when it encounters an error.

This means that the memory etc is not set to optimum settings or that all onboard interfaces are active, while the audio chips on the mainboard probably will not use that much electric it's a bit annoying.

[hkt83100]

Another solution might be to use a NAS. Synology has many options, I am running a DS211j with 2*2 TB as media server, NFS server, Samba server, and it could do much more. No need to pay electricity for a complete PC. The box has a great user interface, which can be accessed from everywhere with a browser.

[Richard-BKK]

I have a mainboard, memory and a processor plus a hard disk... how much more power can that use that a NAS with about the same performance?

The benefits from a real Linux installation is that you can and get updates as soon as they get introduced. Ubuntu is pretty fast with security updates, you can even setup that Ubuntu server update itself. Also the programs / packages available for a Linux server are truly endless...

In the past I had a NAS and it had a Torrent client, but worked not that well. With my Linux computer running Zune / Azureus I got 700KB/s while the NAS never went over 150KB/s tried all settings and it never went over 150KB/s (like it was locked).

With my little Linux Home Server I can install and run any torrent client I want, currently I'm trying out Deluge which also has a nice web interface, from which I can control anything...

Another thing is that I not have installed X, or any other graphical manager, so I only shell into the server with SSH and control the various programs with a web interface if they offer that... Running X, with Gnome, KDE or any other GUI will use a lot more electrical power...

[Richard-BKK]

Here a picture of my little home server, as you can see it's just a old minitower case with the front plastic being replaced by a 10 THB piece of plastic board from my neighborhood office equipment seller.

The ventilators are also nothing special, I have a 120x120mm ventilator in the place of the 5.25” drive bay, and a 80x80mm ventilator cooling the hard disk. On the side I also have a 80x80mm ventilator feeding air to the cpu cooler. I know it's probably a bit overkill but I had the ventilators so why not use them....

I'm thinking of buying a nicer case this weekend, but as this little server will probably end up in a empty corner of my home I find it hard to justify spending more money....

p.s. the keyboard and monitor are connected to the slimline computer behind the “little server”...

[justsumhelp]

Not vetted or open source yet but bitTorrent Sync seems worth a try

[Richard-BKK]

To be honest the idea of my server @ home did not originated with the Linux operating system in mind, as not so long ago a Microsoft representative gave me a evaluation copy of MS Windows Server 2012. And at the office I have no time to play around with something like that. So originally I bought the Asus H61M-A/USB3, Intel Pentium G2120 processor and 4GB DDR3/1333 memory to checkout MS Windows Server 2012.

But very quickly I found out that the error message I got from starting Windows Server 2012 from DVD was related to the amount of internal memory, 4GB was not enough, so I replaced it with 2x 4GB SIMS (8GB total) and even that was not enough. So in the end I placed 2x 8GB SIMS (16GB total) and after that MS Windows Server 2012 was able to run.

While memory is not that expensive, I found it a bit crazy to run a server at home with that amount of memory. My obvious second choice was Centos Server as most of our computers at office and servers run Fedora or RedHat Ent. Linux. But I found that setting up simple things like a torrent client which I could control from a web interface was a bit more complicated than what I would like at home... There was also something with the Centos kernel what was not included in the standard build, and recompiling a kernel just to run a one or two page website is not what I was looking for.

After I wrote down what I really wanted from a little server at home and looked around which operating system would be the best operating system for what I wanted, I ended with Ubuntu Server. I also tried Fedora 19 as server, but I only had a LiveCD which installed so much graphical stuff which I later needed to remove and install other stuff that it didn't installed which needed for my server I was quickly back with Ubuntu Server...

One important thing with Ubuntu Server is that so much people use it at home or SOHO that you can find online a answer for any question you maybe have... I even dare to say that if you cannot find a answer to a problem, probably search with the wrong question...

[dharmabm]

speaking of the 'little server at home', i just installed owncloud on mine earlier today (in a VM), took me all of about 10 minutes to install and configure. still playing around with options but i am pretty impressed. i have been comparing and considering the various cloud storage options available for some time (primarily for backing up my android phone) and i came to the conclusion that although i have accounts with google, dropbox and ubuntuone i didn't want to store my personal data (especially pictures) on any of them. at this point, i am now going to stop syncing my phone with any google services and only keep my account on the phone for the market (and only for apps i cannot get through f-droid). longterm i see myself using my local cloud to back up all devices, then syncing that to an external drive (and possibly also to my AWS server), which seems to be the easiest way yet that i have found to keep everything safe and secure with redundant storage (local, local cloud, external drive and secure external cloud). plus owncloud has a ton of other apps available that i haven't even delved into yet. i love new toys!

[solai4]

you can even download free open source nas OS

http://www.freenas.org/

http://www.nas4free.org/

[Richard-BKK]

Today I did a clean install of Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on my home server, I had a problem with my server that the old 320GB hard drive I used for my little server started to get write/read errors.

With a 1TB Western Digital Blue hard drive only costing 1990 THB I not needed much time to think it over...

At the beginning I had some problems with getting Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on a USB Flashdrive, apparently the version of Unetbootin I was using didn't work... a newer version fixed the problem.

Not much difference between Ubuntu Server 13.10 and Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS, with the exception that some packages are more up-to-date Samba Server for instance which is now release family 4, which was 3...