Home Server Projects

When one of them is running, the other one is disconnected. I found that its easy to try out or focus on specific features of both systems by alternately connecting the drive with Kraken or Debbie on it and running some tests. Debbie is still running more than Kraken simply because I have a lot steeper learning curve with her than with the beast. His stuff I've seen a lot of already!

Been spending a lot of time reading on-line Debian manuals. Unfortunately a number of them are somewhat irrelevant to the current distribution. Debian Reference seems to have large chunks of fairly good info. I plan on finishing it today.

My Debian server has all of my selected applications with a few additional applications I didn't expect (OpenOffice Writer for one) but they don't seem to be much of an issue. All of the needed applications were a part of the Debian distro or the on-line apt-get system. In that regard -Excellent work! Debian-maniacs (or whatever you've decided to call yourselves!)

I'm still doing research on Debbie and Kraken. I found that the only way to use the backup facilities of either was to use an agent included with each of the respective backup aps that is installed on the target desktops. Windows Home Server (Kraken) uses a install module that can be installed ONLY on Windows boxes. Bacula on Debian has a similar method but has agents that can be installed on practically everything. Advantage -- Bacula.

Apache installed with no fuss whatsoever. In fact I had to pop open browsers on three or four different computers to believe how easy it was. Like nothing had to be done. I'll be checking out the configuration within this next week. Considering my history with IIS4, 5 & 6, advantage – Apache, absolutely no question.

Ice Weasel, the Debian version of FireFox, works very well perhaps faster than the Windows version of FireFox. No Active X support (no popups!), two points for Ice Weasel. Able to use every FireFox extension, plugin and addon, another two points for Ice Weasel. I have been a fan of FireFox since .9 Beta. FireFox gets my vote and usage not only here but at work as Primary Browser. I especially like the fact that Microsoft has bowed to pressure and allows FireFox on most of MSDN to work properly. The only places I have to use Internet Exploder is on the Passport/Live/(whatever-the-hell-they're-calling-it-next-week) websites.

The GNU C, C++ compilers are installed, along with all of the samples, tutorials and docs I could find! I have no idea how to vote on these boys yet. The price was right. Visual Studio 2005's IDE is very attractive and easy to use. Its probably the best piece of software Microsoft has ever put out. Considering the idea was that I wouldn't get into to programming on this project, maybe I should ignore this issue.

DNS caching server, DHCP3 and letting Samba handle WINS. DNS cahing is working very nicely. I haven't starting running DHCP3 yet since my other Linux system is currently supplying IPs.

File Serving is a little bit different obviously since we are matching bananas and pears. (You expected me to use Apples and oranges?) On Kraken, the WHS sets up a workgroup with a set of shares with permissions divided up by users and/or groups. Logon security can be enabled with Kerberos, hashed or not Lan Manager or https. There might be more mechanisms, this was a quick first look. Files can also be set for local workgroup access with and without web serving access. Obviously any access on the Kraken from a Linux client will have to be through Samba client services on the Linux clients which handles Kerberos and Lan Manager, at least in the Debian distro it does. The Linux client's Samba logon will have to be programmed into the WHS as a valid client even for files marked as for Everyone. That is a side effect of dumping fast-user switching and enabling controlled shares on any Windows server or workstation, not unlike leaving security wide open on a bunch of Linux systems or running a workgroup of Win9X boxes (no they aren't EXACTLY the same but just somewhat similar(;-).

My previous experience with Windows says that file sharing with Kerberos enabled will not be really possible on Win9X clients, it will be difficult with Win NT 4.0 and OK with Win2K and XP. So with WHS operating as the server, the security options will require some compromises if the home clients aren't all XP or Vista. All of the above will operate properly as Lan Manager clients. However, “Fast User Switching” can't be used on the XP Pro clients since it breaks the access to shares that are shared with anything other than simple Windows folder shares. Vista clients, who cares? I'm not paying for Vista anything after battling with Vista Beta and Vista RC1, forget it. In any case I would not expect something based on Windows 2003 Server to support those sorts of simple shares.

As you would expect with a Linux server, everything to be accessible by Windows clients has to be served by Samba. Since Samba now has the abilities to operate as a Domain controller in what would normally be a small workgroup, I'm going to take advantage of that to deal with the security issues for all the Windows and Linux clients that way. Samba, as long as you are using Lan Manager sorts of file sharing without Kerberos, will allow all Windows based clients to connect. The Linux clients will connect through the normal NFS. So I have to call this file serving function a tie until I can really exercise both systems.

The characteristics of both operating systems' methods of serving shares are similar. Folders on the WHS are not associated with a drive letter on the server just as the Linux filesystem does not use drive letters.*1 This is somewhat of a departure from traditional Windows file serving systems in the past. Its a sort of cross between the Distributed File System (DFS) and Active Directory “containers” or Organizational Unit folders. The Windows users will see an Icon or object with a label that they can drag and drop a file or folder to put the media files or data files onto the server. In other words nothing Linux users haven't seen for years.

I'm going to have to do a bunch of testing to see which works better but just from looking at it, the windows clients (XP and Vista only) will have a real easy time connecting only to the WHS (Kraken). Whereas the Linux and ALL Windows clients will require a little fussing but it can be done easily enough so that scripting can automate the process fairly well on the Linux Home Server (Debbie) I suspect.

*1. Come on guys! Do you really think that hiding a drive partition with hda, or hdb is
fooling anybody? I agree that most users don't often need physical awareness of where or what is holding your data. But when the physical world slaps you into back into chaotic reality, when you're trying to fix a system with a dead drive and you can't remember which drive has hda or /home/username on it, it might be nice to know what PHYSICAL drive has what! I will eventually get used to it.

I haven't seen Pirates3 but in Pirates 2 I remember a critter called the Kraken, a octopus/squid thing that devoured entire ships. OK, imagine a computer's hard drives being ships. The Kraken in the WHShip eats all of the ships and you have to have one that's as big as 65 really Big Guns or the Kraken stalls. What's interesting though is that if the ship is/are flying the Penguin flag, it can't do anything to the ship, not even wipe it off the ocean!

Sure glad I didn't plan to do anything meaningful this weekend. The Kraken reports he'll be done in 51 minutes but 10 minutes ago, he reported he would be done in 52 minutes. Its definitely a Beta, its got nothing but 50% gray backgrounds (for at least half the time) no attempt at wowing you with pretty wallpaper or color washes.

Kraken says he's only 4 years old and that he has a much bigger brother. He kind of surprised me. He burped twice and then came back flying a much prettier flag but then he said he be done in 39 minutes. I've seen that before many times and I didn't believe it then either!

Kraken's watch isn't a very good one. He thought I wasn't watching when he jumped from 32 minutes to 25 minutes till he's done. What's also very odd is that he keeps saying the exact same 6 or 7 things over and over again. Some of his older siblings have at least 15 to 20 different things to say over and over. He has also been a little confused because he tells me he's one thing then he tells me he's something else. He's kind of a patchwork critter.

He still keeps telling me he's 4 years old but then he decides to tell me he's brand new. hmmmm. But I saw some free stuff being flashed on the the little windows that all ended in 6 instead of 7.

Well Kraken took 1 hour 25 minutes to finish belching and burping. I lost count at 7 or 8 burps. He tells me I have 30 days to turn the key in Davy Jones locker to get 180 days of uninterrupted action. Feels like I'm running an XBOX360 demo game. yipee.

UPDATE am 6-17-2007

Kraken didn't find the 4 year old NIC. Winsta Beta and RC1 did though! We're talking [u]OLD[/u] stuff here. Pretty desktop though, nice integrated console. BUT outside of eating the entire "ship", Kraken can't do anything since he can't hear or talk!!! No wonder the sniffer never caught a whiff of fish. To ripoff Harlan Ellison, "he has no mouth and he must scream!" Big Whoops for the Redmond Gorilla. This little baby Kraken is not ready for the consumer masses, its a geek-toy.

By the way, Kraken's wristwatch is really dumb. Date and Time came up all messed up, looks like it grabbed clock time of build compiler to start the clock.

Kraken also had to run out a moldy fishNET, and like always it took half an hour to self-compile, really annoying. I have a sneaking suspicion that when I fix Kraken's ears and mouth, Kraken and the Gorilla will have a long talk and the old stuff might magically disappear.

The underlying OS looks to be Debian 4.0.

At this point it looks like the major server applications I will be using will include:

Bacula -- for system backups, incremental backups and bare metal restores

Samba -- obviously for Windows compatibility. But not so obvious, operate it in Domain Controller mode for both Windows and Linux logon account control eliminating the need for a Win2K3 Server.

Apache, obvious choice.

MySql, again, it seems as if 90% of the applications out there need this as a dependency.

GNU C, C++ compilers

FireFox 2.0x for the web browser interface. It has an especially consistent appearance across both Linux and Windows desktops.

A DNS tertiary server coupled with a DHCP server, no choices here yet. Samba offers a DHCP service coupled with a WINS server (a good thing to have for Windows boxes) that might become the defacto DHCP service.

LDAP, I'm not completely convinced that I need this service in a small network. It might come up as a dependency at some point.

Some sort of Digital Video Recorder package with a video capture card will be a secondary upgrade item. Although it might be cheaper to buy a a DVD player with a digital output port on it instead and just use it to feed digital video to the hard drive.

I personally think that that Remote Access from an Internet location into the home network desktops is asking for trouble. I will not implement that on the first iteration of the system. Likewise serving digital media files to the Internet is again asking for trouble. DMZ's were made for these situations. I can't see most home owners wanting to invite worldwide hackers into their home virtually.

Using Kerberos, RADIUS and VPN technology for remote access and/or control is a possibility.

I can see it setup to download RSS, email, news feeds from specific sites, weather maps and forecasts from weather services, traffic updates etc.

MythTV is definitely going to be a project for the future and most likely on another computer.