HomeServer Part 4 - Installation

A few things has changed during the last 5-6 weeks. I have been able to aquire some used parts to upgrade my HomeServer project. Thus the Hardware setup for this project is as follows :

CPU Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
RAM 640 MB DDR Ram
Motherboard Intel 845 Desktop Motherboard
NICs 2 x D-Link DGE-628T Gigabit
Graphics board GeForce 2 MX
TV Tuner BrookTree 878 Based card
Hard disk drives 160 GB Seagate Harddisk ATA
Optical drives 20x Lite-On DVD-RW drive
Power Supply Unit Trust 520W Pro PSU Low Noise Big Fan
Computer case Full Size “server” tower with

• 3 internal 3.5” hdd bays
• 1 external 3.5” floppy bay
• 5 external 5.25” bays

The Graphics board and the TV Tuner are probably the oldest parts in this setup. The graphics board is mainly there because I need it during the initial install. Also most systems will not start without a Graphics board. The TV Tuner board is one that I have sitting idle in my desktop computer so the plan is to get some sort of Media Server part up and running too.

The optical drive was used for installation purposes as well and will be used in my backup plan. The current hard drive will serve both as the boot drive and main storage drive. I was contemplating whether I should partition it with one big root (/) partition and one /home partition or if I should keep a smaller root (/) partition together with /var and /usr partitions. I decided that a big root (/) partition was the way forward as it would allow for both root (/) /var and /usr to grow unproportionately without running into the situation where one partition lacks space and another has plenty of unused blocks.

Future hardware plans:
S-ATA RAID Controller
Hard disk drives 2 x 320 GB (at least) S-ATA in RAID 1 for /home user files

To safeguard personal data such as digital photos, documents, etc I plan to add a RAID 1 array based upon Serial ATA drives. This will, with the backup procedure safeguard important files. If a disk in the RAID 1 array fails, it will continue to run on the other drive. The faulty drive can be replaced and the RAID 1 array will recreate itself onto the new disk. Theoretically this should be possible online, on the fly so that both Data and Server is available as much as possible.

When the RAID 1 array is added it will host the user files in their /home directories. The main /home partition will then host the semi-volatile files such as MP3s created from our CD etc. collection.

Software:

Operating System Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” – server edition

Kernel Ubuntu vanilla kernel 2.6.22

Just shortly before I assembled the hardware, Ubuntu 7.10 code name “Gutsy Gibbon” was released (on oct. 18^th 2007) so I decided to go with the server edition of this new Ubuntu. If you want long term support, or you are simply not comfortable with using the latest version and would rather go for the tried and tested version, I suggest You try the LTS version available to you (6.06 code name “Dapper Drake” at the time of writing this).

Ubuntu detected the IDE controller as a SCSI controller and gave the boot drive the designation /dev/sda.

The drive was partitioned into three parts :
Partition Mount point Type Size
sda1 / ext3 15 GB
sda2 swap 2 GB
sda3 /home ext3 143 GB

The Ubuntu server installer installed the core system. In addition I selected to install the following extra packages:

• OpenSSH server - to allow remote system administration
• LAMP server - Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP. This will allow me to run easy web based administration modules as well as provide a test and development bed for web development.
• Samba file server - to provide remote file storage for windows boxes
• NFS file server - to provide remote file storage for *nix (mainly Linux) boxes
• DHCP server - to provide network management
• Shoreline Firewall - to provide protection from outside (and inside) attacks

During the install I selected to add just one user (jan). I will add more as they are needed. Remember that Ubuntu allows this admin user account to act as root by preceeding the commands with the command sudo. You will be prompted with a request for your password if you have not done sudo within the last 15 minutes.

I also added the procinfo, make, gcc and linux-source packages. Procinfo to provide process etc info. Make, gcc and linux-source to allow me to finetune the kernel on the server as well as other applications.

Next Blog will be on the initial configuration of the HomeServer