Installed Ubuntu last weekend, VERY impressed

pantonious · **7th February 2008, 03:00 PM**

Ok, i've been running WHS for a while now...

but i was having major problems with stability...some weird "volume shadow copy service" error kept on coming up (spent AGES on the technet forums...NOTHING!)

so, i decided to whack ubuntu on there...

Took me the whole weekend to get it running with help from a few of my more linux knowledgeable friends

So, i now have a ubuntu server...File Server and Torrent Server at the moment...

i have 1x750, 1x500 and 2x250 HDDs in there and have them all in a LVM partition so i can add disks as i need them (i know about the risks!)

but yea, just thought i'd let you know...is running very well...hasn't need to be restarted since sunday night...in the same amount of time my WHS machine would've need to be restarted maybe twice? depends how much i download ect...

am also planning on setting up some kind of FTP on it so i can access my files remotely like you can with WHS, prolly using something like apachy (or however u spell it!)

So yea, very impressed...im not going to stop using windows...but for any future servers i build will prolly make them linux builds!

eepunk · **7th February 2008, 03:24 PM**

Should try something a little more stripped down like Clark Connect. Around 50MB in size, the whole thing is controlled through a web browser and shares files through Samba. (which if you don't know it comes with Ubuntu also and can be set up so it connects through Windows mapped drives)

Clark Connect is based on Linux but as evidenced by its size its extremely stripped down.

Apache is web server software BTW.

E.E.

vlad · **7th February 2008, 03:27 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by pantonious

So yea, very impressed...im not going to stop using windows...but for any future servers i build will prolly make them linux builds!

Lunux will never match an awesome glory of Microsoft products. You are wasting your time

eepunk · **7th February 2008, 03:36 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by vlad

Lunux will never match an awesome glory of Microsoft products. You are wasting your time

Um...okay.

Though, I suspect its comments like that that may well be wasting my time.

E.E.

arkay · **7th February 2008, 03:51 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by pantonious

but yea, just thought i'd let you know...is running very well...hasn't need to be restarted since sunday night...in the same amount of time my WHS machine would've need to be restarted maybe twice?

Sweet

You should be able to say the same thing a year from now. There's pretty much no reason to physically reboot a linux box. 99.99999% can be fixed without a reboot. Just don't get tempted to reboot cause that's what you'd do with windoze

Couple of interesting things you might want to look into is permissions and symlinks. Between the two you can get your shares working well with MCE. I have mine so that MCE can write the thumbs.db files to the shares but no files can be deleted from within the MCE interface.

I also use symlinks to link all the suitable content into a single folder called kids that is shared. That way they only need to go into one folder to see all their stuff and I can have things like Doctor Who in two shares at the same time while there's only one copy on the actual server

Let me know if you want to know how to set your permissions for the thumbnail thing etc.

Cheers,

Arkay.

nkerkin · **7th February 2008, 04:21 PM**

pantonious,
are you just using you're ubuntu box as a storage/torrent box or are you planning on using it to back up your pc's etc ala WHS? I've heard some very good things about WHS (along with the bad) and was hoping to hear other people's equivalent linux experiences.

supafly · **7th February 2008, 05:10 PM**

I had a linux box running in my old place, really was great. Im with arkay about the rebooting too

vlad · **8th February 2008, 08:28 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by eepunk

Um...okay.

Though, I suspect its comments like that that may well be wasting my time.

E.E.

Don't read it then.
Gee, some people just don't get sarcasm

pantonious · **12th February 2008, 02:35 PM**

thx for the replies...

another ~week or so along and haven't needed to do anything to do with any settings or reboot or restart services or watever!

@eepunk, i have looked at it...i didn't look into it a great deal, but from what i've seen, i don't think it would let me run a torrent program on it??? plus if i decide i want to do any weird stuff with my server (ie, virtual machines, video encoding, etc) i won't have to worry about re-installing the OS...and yea, am gonna look into apache soonish

@arkay, i have just mapped my mounted storage partition as the Z: drive and told MCE to look there...works well for what i want...99% of the time i am the only person using the computer/htpc...the symlinks sound interesting, but i have no real use for it at the moment...everything is where its supposed to be...

@nkerkin, yea, just file server and torrent box...maybe FTP too...i didn't use the backup feature in WHS either...if i want something specific backed up then i will do it manually (very rare

)

vbmds · **12th February 2008, 02:53 PM**

I've been running ubuntu for a year or so now, including a server, and am very pleased with it overall. Like anything, its got its shortcomings, as well as strengths. Currently issues with multiple monitors is the anoying feature, in the previous edition it was WiFi.

The ubuntu server edition isn't too big really, it also doesn't have a GUI which can make it interesting to get around.

I also looked at Clark Connect when setting up my server, but dropped as it does not support NTFS in any way - my server used to run 2003 Server and so all the HDDs are NTFS format.