File Server Question From a Newbie Squared.

[fulcar]

I would call myself a Linux Newbie, but that is giving myself too much credit. I am starting to figure out a little of the navigation. Using the command line doesn't really "scare" me, but I just can't figure out how to get it to work. Nothing makes sense when I try to get it to work.

Here is what I am trying to do:

Turn a spare computer with 3 hard drives and a DVD drive into a File server.

Current setup: desktop PC with 512ram, primary master partitioned to three areas with ubuntu server 8.04 in one, a swap in one, and the other formated NTFS. Primary slave and secondary master patitioned and formated ntfs. DVD is secondary slave.

Cable modem, wireless router, 2 notebooks. one with XP home, one with Vista home premium.

What I would like is for two of the server drives to show up on any computer that logs on to my network this will be for bland stuff like some music, pictures, and some soccer schedules, and then have the other area as a more secure probably password protected area to keep some back ups, and more sensitive stuff. Lastly, as if what I was asking isn't hard enough, since it will be in the garage where I have a TV room setup, I would like to be able to browse the internet, and occasionally watch a show, or put in a DVD movie. As luck has it, the system has a 64 meg video card, spdf out, and a 19 inch flat screen monitor.

So what can I do? Is this even possible? I can't even seem to change drives in linux, or get "Samba" (since that is what people say to use) to install, although I would have sworn that was supposed to install during the setup. i was able to browse the internet with a program called w3m? although when I tried to download and install "opera" browser i failed miserably.

Thanks, and sorry if this is someplace else. i looked, but didn't see anything that looked like it matched, i thought I found something but it was obviously for someone more advanced.

[Freston]

Welcome to the forums!

Maybe you find what you're looking for in this setting up samba howto

I can't even seem to change drives in linux

Nope, you can't. There are no drives in Linux. Everything is part of one big happy filesystem. What you have are mountpoints, places where the filesystems are tied to the directory structure.

For example
What you know as the C: drive is in Linux (and all other *nixes) the / directory.
A lot of Windows users have their data on a separate partition, known as the D: drive.
A lot of Linux users have their data on a separate partition, mounted under /home
And /media/cdrom is the directory where you cdrom gets mounted where I to insert one in my machine.