Linux home data center challenge :-)

[David Fletcher]

At 00:40 05/10/2006, you wrote:

>I was just speculating how hard it would be to turn my Fedora
>box (which is up all the time) into the central system all
>my other computers go to for information (smtp, dns, imap, dhcp,
>etc).

This is something I also fancy doing sometime, but I would question 
whether Fedora is the best distribution for the purpose. What is 
needed IMHO is something that once set up will be extremely stable 
and won't need to be upgraded for a long time. Because of the 
relatively rapid fire release cycle of Fedora it is great for the 
desktop where you want all the latest stuff but not necessarily for a server.

Ubuntu Server is currently promising, I think, a five year support 
period, so that is the one we are currently looking at for a new 
engineering department server at work. I've got it experimentally set 
up on what used to be my desktop PC, serving files and some queues 
for networked printers via Samba. I've not tried setting up email 
services yet - that's also something I want to try to learn to do in 
the future. I'm keeping notes on what I've done to it so far to set 
it up, if you want to see these just email me off list and I'll send 
the file over to you.

Another very important aspect of the project, I think, is what 
hardware you are going to use. A home server does not need, to take 
the other extreme as an example, the same sort of processing power as 
Amazon. I've got a server running subversion for my software 
development and other work, using a Via mini ITX board set up as a 
headless server. I don't know where in the world you are located but 
judging from your spelling of the word "centre" (No, no, please don't 
start that one off again!) you are located in the USA. In the UK you 
can get dual LAN socket (for firewall/router), low power, fanless 
mini ITX boards from here:-

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#epiaek

It is important to choose the smallest machine you can to reduce 
energy consumption, especially if it's going to be running 24/7. Plus 
with a fanless motherboard the processor is included in the price, 
and there's one less moving part to fail.

Hope this helps.

Dave F