my dumpster fileserver.

cbags101

Gawd
Joined
Nov 26, 2006
Messages
751
So I found a dell Dimension 4700 in the dumpster the other day and though it might make a decent little file server/dedicated torrent box. I found 2 of them, one was missing the PSU. The other worked, but didn't have SATA. So I had to order a 20 to 24 pin adapter for the PSU and use it in the good one.

Specs:
P4 w/HT @ 2.8ghz
512mb of PC2-2700 or 3200 (not sure)
currently has an 80gb drive
plans to get 2x 1.5tb drives

A couple of hardware problems I can foresee: Possible no-raid support. Possible no gigabit e-net.

Here's what I plan to do with it. Host multimedia files for streaming to my PS3 and run a torrent client on it at the same time. It will most likely be headless.

What free linux based OS do most people use for such an application? FreeNAS looks pretty good to me, but I haven't been able to test anything yet as I am waiting to get the PSU adapter in the mail. Would I be better off just running fedora? Or is that I little to resource needy for this box?
 
I would say go with freenas for storage, but Im not sure if the ps3 could access that so can't offer much help in terms of what the ps3 can/can't do.
 
You can use either FreeNAS or OpenFiler.

I have FreeNAS run on ITX-220+SMP394, it can do about 65MB/sec - write

and stream to TVIX-6600 and EP6000 (both HD media players) at the same time
 
FreeNAS or FreeBSD would run fine on that rig; Linux (Ubuntu Server, Fedora, Gentoo, w/e you want) would as well if you preferred that. Software RAID within either OS will work great.
 
sweet. thanks for all the help guys. im kind of a linux noob, so wasnt sure about software RAID support.

at this point im probably going to try out FreeNAS and FreeBSD, see which ones work well. I think the PS3 streaming will be an afterthought to see if we can get it working. I'll be happy with a torrent/NAS box though.
 
Software raid is on the os level and independent of what IDE/SATA/SCSI/FC/SAS ... controller you have.
 
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