Advice requested: Best distro to run as a home file/media server

[SoWhy]

Hi there,

I'm planning to install a small nettop computer as a home file- and media-server in my home network. I want it to run Linux but I'm unsure which distribution is best suited for this task. It should meet the following requirements:

• Able to be controlled completely via SSH
• Small X-Window-System that allows VNC control
• Ability to run a DLNA-Server (with fast indexing of available files)
• Running a webserver and bittorrent client
• Running Samba with easy configuration
• Small size (<= 10 GB)
• Huge available repository in case I want to install new applications

I'd personally prefer a distro with an active "root" user but that's not a requirement. What I would like to have though is a distro that allows me to install and setup the required tasks easily.

TIA
SoWhy

[Roxoff]

All the things you want here I do with a CentOS server, and the system footprint for that (aside from data and home directories) comes in at about 6Gig or so, I think. And that system has Samba as a PDC, Web, email, home directories, LDAP, DNS, UPnP/DLNA and some other bits.

I don't think you'll have any problems running any of the major server distros to do this - the problem you'll have is storage space for whatever you're sharing over DLNA.

My server uses uShare to do the UPnP/DLNA thing. I've had some issues getting that to work properly, but it's kinda working now. On my CentOS 5.7 server it doesn't seem to like symlinked directories very much - it doesn't provide indexes of those directories. I share the content out to a PS3.

[SoWhy]

Thanks for the tip, I had a look at CentOS 6.2 in a VM. It looks nice but it misses some things; uShare doesn't seem to be available on CentOS 6 and a number of tools to configure things (like Samba) were removed. Should I use CentOS 5.x instead? Oo

[Roxoff]

If you're going to install CentOS, then go for 6. My server is running 5.7 because it's been in place for four years or so. When I get round to upgrading it, I'll probably go for 6, or maybe 7. The server OS has quite a long maintenance tail.

uShare isn't in the base repo but there are a couple of extra ones that you can add; EPEL which is aimed at RedHat Enterprise (and so works with its clone CentOS) and RPMForge.

[SoWhy]

Yes, I found it in EPEL and RPMForge but both only have a version for EL5. Is that a problem?

[atreyu]

Yes, it would likely not work, as it will be compiled against a different version of glibc and various other libs. You could always download the source rpm from one of those repo dirs and rebuild it for your host, though, e.g:

wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/SRPMS/ushare-1.0-4.el5.src.rpm
rpmbuild --rebuild ushare-1.0-4.el5.src.rpm

No idea if it'll build successfully, just a thought.

[SoWhy]

Yes, it would likely not work, as it will be compiled against a different version of glibc and various other libs. You could always download the source rpm from one of those repo dirs and rebuild it for your host, though, e.g:

wget hxxp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/SRPMS/ushare-1.0-4.el5.src.rpm
rpmbuild --rebuild ushare-1.0-4.el5.src.rpm

No idea if it'll build successfully, just a thought.

Thanks for your continued assistance but there does not seem to be a "rpmbuild" application on my install nor does a package by that name exist

[Roxoff]

Well CentOS 5 still has a lot of life left in it - it's based on RedHat Enterprise 5, which has three years at least left on its maintenance cycle. Tou could always go with that as the primary use will be to do the uShare thing. Even if the OS was no longer maintained, you'd still be able to use it for this purpose and then upgrade it later when uShare (or some other DLNA server) becomes available for 6.

[atreyu]

Thanks for your continued assistance but there does not seem to be a "rpmbuild" application on my install nor does a package by that name exist

You need to install the rpm-build package, which contains the rpmbuild tool, plus others.

But unless there is some burning need for 6.x, you're better off following Roxoff's advice, IMO - stick w/the 5.x version of the RHEL family. It will make installing all your apps (even those you don't know you need yet) easier on you, as there is a much better chance that you'll find the 5.x version in the RPM Fusion/EPEL, etc. repos.

[noris]

I was quite in the SoWhy's situation last weekend, moved from fc14 to centos 6.2, just to find out repos are missing ushare (and i386 distribution lacks xfs support, just letting everyone know).

Having just read this thread in need of ushare, it occured to me;

~]# yum localinstall {URL_of_your_nearby_fedora_miror}/pub/fedora/linux/releases/16/Everything/i386/os/Packages/ushare-1.1a-9.fc16.i686.rpm

yes, fc16 rpm. tested, works like a charm. anything older won't do and I haven't tried fc17.

this;

~]# uname -a
Linux asdf 2.6.32-220.7.1.el6.i686 #1 SMP . .
~]# rpm -qa | grep ushare
ushare-1.1a-9.fc16.i686