Need help with Partitioning Strategy for simple Ubuntu File Server

sitheris

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2004
Messages
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Hi,

I plan on converting my WHS server to Ubuntu soon. It currently has 2x 1.5tb drives. I would like to mimic Folder Duplication using Rsync or something similar, as I don't have a RAID card.

I am wondering on a few things:

1. Should I use LVM?

2. How should I partition and mount my drives? I am thinking maybe 15-20gb off of my first drive for system (mounted on /), and the remaining partition would be mounted to /home. My second drive could be mounted under /backup or something.

I'm just looking for recommendations as I haven't done anything like this - only reason I want to switch to Ubuntu is for learning purposes.

Thanks in advance!
 
Ubuntu (linux) does software raid reasonably well

Since it is for learning, I would start with Ubuntu desktop (or apt-get install ubuntu-desktop) first thing... just makes things a bit easier for the very first time

I would also do everything in /
Worry about making different partitions later, or smarter yet -- if it's only for file serving just upgrade to ZFSGuru :)
 
Thanks for the reply vraa!

Well I finished this project this weekend and here is what I ended up doing:

OS:
Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop 64-bit (if I could do it all over again I'd use Ubuntu server as I haven't needed the GUI at all)

Partitions:
Disk 1 (WD Caviar Green 1.5TB)
/dev/sda1 (30GB) Mounted on /
/dev/sda2 (2GB) Swap
/dev/sda5 (Remaining Space) Mounted on /backup

Disk 2 (WD Caviar Green 1.5TB)
/dev/sdb1 (1.5TB) Mounted on /home

I think eventually I will buy a 3TB drive for backups whenever the need for more space arises, and use the two 1.5TB drives for main storage


Software:
netatalk + avahi for sharing to my Macs (I might add smb later for my PC laptop)
ushare for streaming videos to my Xbox 360
webmin + openssh-server for server administration

Backups are being done hourly with a cron job that executes incremental rsync script, which somewhat mimics WHS folder duplication I suppose. I have no need for keeping history of this data - my only requirement is to have it backed up to a separate physical drive.

Todo still:
Setup SMB
Try out some other media streaming software (ushare seems to have music streaming issues with the 360)

All in all, things went much smoother than I expected and I should have a lot more fun with this than my boring old WHS setup :)
 
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