| Who needs Windows Home Server with Linux around? |
Aug. 21, 2007
Analysis -- Is this a joke? I only recently started paying attention to Windows Home Server, since I tend to focus more on desktop operating systems and enterprise server systems. So I didn't realize until now that WHS is really just a vanilla file server.
There's nothing wrong with being an ordinary file server for the home. After all, with many home users having multiple computers and gigabytes of music, photos and movies, it's well past time for homes to start having simple-to-use file servers. But, why pay extra for it?
After all, there's already a whole industry of companies that make external hard drives that already do everything that WHS does. Microsoft started shipping WHS to OEMs in July, but I haven't seen news of WHS devices shipping soon yet. That may be because the existing external hard drives already do everything that WHS-powered systems do, but you don't have to pay $199 for the privilege. You see, almost all external hard drives and NAS (network-attached storage) devices already use Linux and Samba for $0.00.
For that matter, you may not need to buy an external hard drive or a more expensive WHS device. You see, you can take pretty much any old PC you've got lying around and turn it into a file server with Linux and Samba. Oh, and you can also use it as a router, home gateway, firewall, whatever. You can't do any of that with Microsoft's WHS.
In 2007, anyone, and I mean anyone, can set up a computer to work as a simple file server with Linux and Samba. If you Google around on the Web, you'll find many guides on how to do it. For example, there's "Quick and dirty Samba setup." It's a fine introduction, but like many others, it includes such scary concepts as editing the smb.conf file and telling you that you must use the command line.
Command line? We don't need no stinkin' command line! Here's how.
First, pick out the box that you want to play the role of file server. It can be pretty much anything that can run Linux, but for a file server you really want something that has a decent-sized hard drive.
I decided to use a 2003 vintage HP Pavilion a250n. This PC has a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor with 800MHz front-side bus, and 512MB of PC2700 DDR (double data rate) RAM. For graphics, it uses a low-end Nvidia GeForce 4 MX. And, for my purposes, the best thing about it was that it had a decent-sized hard drive: 120GB SATA (Serial ATA).
While I've used this system with many Linuxes, I decided to throw a new desktop Linux on it to make the project a little more real-world. After all, just because I know that for server work it's hard to go wrong with either an OpenSUSE/SUSE Linux or a Fedora/Red Hat Enterprise Linux server operating system doesn't mean any home user will necessarily have a clue.
So, I decided that since Ubuntu is popular, I'd give the latest version of the Ubuntu derivate Linux Mint a try. One download later, I had the ISO image. I then burned it to a DVD, popped it in my PC and let it do its thing.
Some people will still tell you that installing Linux can be a horror show. All I can tell you is that, like almost every Linux I've worked on in the last three or four years, installing Mint was as easy as falling off a log. I told it I wanted it to use English and a standard American keyboard and that I lived in the Eastern time zone. Oh yeah, this was hard stuff. About 10 minutes later I was booting into my new Mint system. I gave it the creative name "Mint30."
Next, since this is a desktop Linux, I figured the chances of it having the Samba server already installed were somewhere between slim and none. The winner was none. So, I installed the server software by using Mint's default program installer: Adept Manager.
How did I do this? By picking it out from the main KDE menu and telling it to search for Samba. As you can see in my first figure, picking out Samba's main program wasn't much trouble.
(Click to enlarge)
After that, it was time to start setting Samba up. Why, look at this: Right there in the KDE control center, under Internet and Networks, there are the Samba settings.
(Click to enlarge)
You'll note that everything's grayed out. That's because, as with the Ubuntu Linux family, you have to log in, via the sudo command, to access the important system controls. However, unlike in Vista, which makes changing system settings an endless cycle of telling it that you need to make an important change to the computer, with Ubuntu, you just hit the Administrator Mode button and enter your password, and you're good to go for the job at hand.
So, once I'm in the admin mode, I need to make the critical decision to name my server ... Ah, let's continue to be creative and call it Mint30.
(Click to enlarge)
I also need to give the server a level of security. This is for home use, so there are only two choices to bother with. There's share, which is no security whatsoever--think Windows peer-to-peer sharing.
The other choice worth considering for my simple-minded home server is User. The title says it all. You need to be listed as a user on the Linux server to access the directories that are open for everyone or directories, like /home/sjvn, that are open to only their owners.
(Click to enlarge)
So much for users and security; let's now move over to Shares. Here, I create a new public-to-anyone directory named "Video." Three guesses on what I'm planning on placing in this directory. That's the only thing I had to do on this panel. Next!
Now I need to set up "Video" for anyone on the network to use. As you can see, I didn't have to do much here. Here's the directory, here's its name on the network, and yes, it's public: Anyone can read or write to this directory.
(Click to enlarge)
Now, that it's all set up, the only thing I have left to do is to turn on file sharing. So, I hop up the KDE control center tree to the File Sharing option, click on Enable Local File Sharing and Simple Sharing, and that's it.
(Click to enlarge)
I now should have a working Samba-based file server for any Windows user on my network. Did it work? Well, let's head over to my Windows XP PC and see if it can find it.
Sure enough, there it is, and it works just fine.
Well, except for Vista it works fine. Vista has problems with Samba and Samba-powered external hard drives and NAS devices. No surprise there, Vista's a pain on any network. I've been able to force Vista to talk to any of these devices, including Mint30 earlier today, by forcing Vista to use the NTLM protocol. For instructions on how to pull this off, see my tale, "Getting Vista to work with Samba."
Except for that, Windows file-server life is good and easy with Linux these days. Before you go out and buy an external hard drive, or, heavens forbid, a WHS system, give Linux and an old PC a try. You're likely to save some bucks and gain some storage.
If you want to try more advanced Samba networking, or you run into trouble, may I highly recommend the book "Using Samba, Third Edition" and such Web sites as the Samba Group's own documentation site.
—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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