Do I have time for this?
Thoughts from the vaults...
Thursday 3 January 2008, 2:25 PM
Linux saves the junkyard dogs
A crisis call comes in from on high to inform me that we'll have four people in a porta-cabin on a client site and they'll need access to their e-mail, Internet & need the ability to share files - Oh and sorry about the short notice but could you sort it out before close of business tomorrow?
A rummage in the basement junkyard of Bitsmith towers turns up a retired Dell Poweredge 2650 which appears to be in perfect working order. Lacking a spare licensed copy of any flavour of Windows Server, and needing to get the box live in short order, I used SME Server 7.2 from Contribs.org which I'd downloaded but never really got around to playing with. Current build is 7.3 from: http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Download
With the absolute minimum of fuss & bother I had an NT4 style PDC up and running in less than an hour. Granted, I'd have needed more time if I'd had to do a more complex config, but given that all I need is essentially a glorified NAS box in the least possible time, this Linux distro is perfect.
Intrigued, I took an old Dell Optiplex GX240 from the same hideout as the Poweredge and ferreted out a pair of identical Maxtor 40Gb IDE disks of similar vintage.
Booting from the SME Server CD and had a test-rig live in less time than it takes to read the FAQ. Even the paltry 256 Mb of RAM in the Optiplex didn't seem to impede it. Shutdown, swap the CD-ROM drive for the spare disk and when you reboot it'll mirror the disks.
Use a pair of 500Gb drives, and you'll have a disk-mirrored NAS box for next to nothing.
To me this is what a proper Linux box should be... Simple, fast, does what it says on the tin. Better still, contribs.org seems almost completely devoid of the holier-than-thou attitude that appears to infect a significant (but shrinking) proportion of the Linux community.
It has been said that Linux is only free if your time is of no value, and that's largely been my experience of it in the past. SME Server has changed that perception and given a new lease of life to a junkyard dog, and for that - above all - I highly recommend it.
PreviousComments on this post
Nice one i think im going to look into SME Server.
"It has been said that Linux is only free if your time is of no value, and that's largely been my experience of it in the past."
As compared to another OS???? It may be more difficult to setup if you are coming from the Wndows world. In my experience, Windows is easily configurable as long as security, stability, and performance are of no value to you.
Good point, and yes I'm looking down the Linux barrel from the point of view of a Windows user/sysadmin/consultant. Like most people in my position I've tinkered with Linux over the years, but my patience for endlessly tweaking .conf files is as limited as my time. What's refreshing about the SME Server distro I referred to was that it took all the info it needed up front, and then just got on with the install. Compared to my experiences with Postfix on Red Hat Linux it's a joy to have something that "just works" without constant tweaking at the command line. SME's simple browser based manager makes the tedious tasks a little easier (yes, Webmin would do something similar in another distro but I'd probably have to compile it first). This is the first server-side Linux distro I've ever seen that's even easier than Windows to install & use, and if I feel like getting at the mechanicals I can always fire up Putty to get down & dirty with it. It's not perfect, but it's more than good enough. To me, that's Linux as it should be. To a Linux purist, it's probably a cop out. In the end, it's all just a matter of preferences.
