Minimalistic central file server for home.

[JT64]

My aim to build a minimalistic fileserver to store pictures and music but also to share/stream music and video to other computers from my USB HDD.

First i was thinking i should use FreeNas or similar but now i realise maybe FreeNas are both to complicated, and support many features i never will use, so maybe i should go for something smaller and simpler?

Basicly i want the most minimalistic SAMBA share server possible, so maybe i should use Win95,Win98 or some minimalistic Linux Distro, maybe there even samba servers for DOS?

Once configurated within workgroup with a filename and password, i should never need to bother with it only turn it on and off.

Any suggestions?

JT

 

[JT64]

Although a torrent client that can be updated remotely from within network would be nice! :D

JT

 

[barythrin]

Kinda sounds like you should just run a nix box with ssh and a command-line torrent client. That way you can ssh in and do whatever, just set up Samba or something (not too hard and lots of how-to's out there) and it will act like a Windows box and share out whatever folder you'd like.

 

[sombunall]

In order to stream videos I would say the minimum hardware would be a Pentium I and even then you could only stream 1 movie at a time. On top of that you might have to do optimizations and get a distro with very little bloat like NetBSD.

 

[Chuck(G)]

How about some "made to purpose' boxes, such as the VIA M'Serve? Small NAS servers are a very hot item in the development stage nowadays; firms such as AMCC and PLX are forging special chips to serve as the core of small NAS servers. So look for more little boxes to be offered very soon.

 

[pontus]

I just bought a Zotac ION motherboard. It is really nice and quite cheap. It has a dual core atom processor, enough power for what I want and uses little electrical power. So far I have installed it in a rack mount case and installed Ubuntu Server and it seems to work well.

 

[TNC]

I also have an Atom 330 Mainboard. Debian Lenny is installed on this machine with NFS File Services. If you don't care about permissons (you still can set permissions per IP), you could use an older version of nfs, which is basically a line to set up in a config file. Of course after installing the program. Clients exist for many operating systems and it is very fast.