At home server for learning puspose

[lordofduct]

Some of you may be getting tired of the boring questions I ask, but that is the way I am. I am someone who likes to learn and will read or build something with no real beneficial outcome except for the knowledge I gain from doing it. I love to ask questions and I am always asking 'why' when I do anything. As a child while watching TV I was more interested in knowing WHY my TV worked and how it received television programs as apposed to the actual program that was on.

This has caused me to start 100's of projects growing up... Many of them you guys have heard about, and more times then not you hear nothing more after its completion (or destruction) as it has become moot to me and my interest had faded. I feel that this constant hunt for knowledge is a good thing as for someone who is actually rather young in the computer world has learned more on my own as apposed to any of my friends around town that have been on computers for their entire lives and even gone to school to get certifications.

This gets me on to my new project, in a realm I am not very well knowledged in, time for learning. The thing is before I even build the project itself, I want the hardware to be functioning the best, and that is why I am here.

I have researched my questions, I put together answers, but I am not fully satisfied with them.

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I want to learn how a server works. So I am building a linux server box out of a P3 and an SY-6IZA motherboard with the purposes of hosting files for my LAN on it with a low power source, routing firewalling the internet too my computers on the LAN, hosting my FTP server on dedicated 24/7 AND as a testing area to learn about webhosting and other things I have NO idea or knowledge about.

For starters I want my data to be secure. A lot of data is transferred over my network to my multiple computers. This data that is stored on the server I want backed up so I am electing a RAID set up with redundancy (RAID1 most likely).

In this set up I have a PCI server NIC with 4 ports for the LAN, each port with it's own dedicated chip. This is going to suck a lot of bandwidth from my PCI bus I know. I am debating where I should put my RAID. I have 2 options:

Option 1: PCI IDE controller with hardware RAID0/1. This has a ATA100 controller on it and will do the RAID1 in hardware so the PCI bus won't be flooded with copies of data caused by software RAID (as each disc is a parody). Downside is that my PCI bus is already flooded with data being sent over my NICs. I have the internet coming in which is minor, but I also have large movies, data files, and the sort being shared between computers on a constant bases and their is again the FTP server and stuff I DL'd.

Option 2: Linux Software RAID done over mobo's IDE channels. I don't a lot about the IDE channels. Are they on a seperate bus then the PCI (I believe they are)? Or is their bandwidth dependant on the useage of the PCI bus? If not this has the advantage of not being interfered with by the network data transfers, but it is only ATA33/66.

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Another thing. I have an HTPC for recording TV on... if I mounted one of the drives from this server onto it would I be able to write directly to it? Do you think the network could handle that much data transfer? And this would also flood the PCI bus again making the NIC slow down... BUT what if I used bus mastering. Would that allow direct write from the NIC to the IDE controller?

Wow, sorry for the long post, if you have any other comments about what to expect stepping into the waters unknown to me (the server part that is) please tell me.

If you're interested in what the system is:

P3 600mhz 66mhz FSB 9x

Soyo SY-6IZA, OC'd to 100mhz FSB as it is limited to 6x so as to get the 600mhz still

128MB PC100 sdram

1 port generic 10/100 NIC (for the WAN)

D-Link DFE-580TX 4-port 10/100 Mpbs server NIC (mainly because I wanted everything in one box as apposed to a switch and the server box)

100W ATX PSU (this also limits me on if I use the PCI IDE controller and the # of HDDs I have)

An assortment of HDDs to choose from.

The SY-6IZA has no onboard video, for initial set up I will be using a craptastic little video card, but after that I plan on doing everything through remote or SSH or something of the sort.

And there will only be a CD-ROM connected during initial install.

 

[mal]

Originally posted by lordofduct@Mon, 2006-01-16 @ 06:39 PM

This has caused me to start 100's of projects growing up... Many of them you guys have heard about, and more times then not you hear nothing more after its completion (or destruction) as it has become moot to me and my interest had faded.

How's the RPG coming along?

 

[it290]

Ok, with that config I think your only worry with regards to saturating the PCI bus is the raid config, and that's not likely to happen with the kind of network setup you're going for. In fact I would suggest software RAID since it doesn't sound like the machine is going to be doing all that much constant hard disc accessing anyway. The CPU might be a limiting factor at some point, though, depending on how much you're serving up simultaneously (probably mostly with your HTPC), and that's where the hardware RAID might be handy. Oh, and yes the onboard IDE channels are part of the PCI bus.

It seems you're planning on setting the machine up as a router as well. If it's just for learning that's cool, but generally speaking it's a bad idea security-wise to run server daemons on the same machine as the router, because if something gets exploited the attacker can easily access your whole network from there.

For the HTPC thing.. serving content you should be fine, but I wouldn't recommend trying to encode over the network. It'd be better to encode locally and then set up a cron job or something to back up your movie files on the server if you want. Even for bidirectional transfer you'll probably be ok as far as network bandwidth goes, I'm guessing. Not sure what you mean by directly writing from the NIC to the HD, it still has to go through the IP stack and the OS. Your main limiting factor here is going to be the network filesystem; I would go with Samba as it has better performance than NFS in my experience and is easy to setup. FTP is an option too -- it has the lowest overhead, but the scripting on both sides would be more complicated.

 

[lordofduct]

thanks it290

Originally posted by mal@Mon, 2006-01-16 @ 06:11 AM

How's the RPG coming along?

[post=143498]Quoted post[/post]​

hahahaha! actually... that is ummm, a different story then you'd imagine. I just don't want to hurt feelings.

I will admit I took a bigger bite then I'd expected, but it wasn't THAT big.

 

[Dragoon42]

Firstly, we're not hooked up to the internet so I can't help you there.

2.) For our network the server is attached to a switch, negating the need for multiple NICs.

3.) RAID is done through hardware, We have a Dell PowerEdge something or other (2350?). I suggest the hardware IDE controller (I R redundent!).

4.) If you want to really get into the backbone of servers I highly suggest FreeBSD. It's what the worlds largest server runs. And I personally use it for my desktop OS freebsd.org. It's the most stable OS available. OpenBSD.org is the most secure if you're really hardcore into that. I now that at least FreeBSD will also run most Linux software through compatabilities it has built into it:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1...k/linuxemu.html

Plus, FreeBSD is VERY well documented and has a very helpful user base, like Ubuntu Linux: www.bsdforums.org

5.) I know Linux has some DVR programs out there. As well as DVD ripping, encoding, and burning software, but I know little about it:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mencoder.html

http://untrepid.com/acidrip/

 

[ExCyber]

Originally posted by lordofduct+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lordofduct)</div><div class='quotemain'>I am someone who likes to learn and will read or build something with no real beneficial outcome except for the knowledge I gain from doing it.[/b]

The technical term for this is "hacker", popular perversion notwithstanding.

Originally posted by lordofduct@

Option 1: PCI IDE controller with hardware RAID0/1. This has a ATA100 controller on it and will do the RAID1 in hardware

What board/chipset is it? Many "RAID cards" really just do software RAID and hide the RAID functions in the driver and BIOS, in which case you're better off just using your OS's softraid capability. Some have "XOR acceleration" for RAID 3/5 but I've heard that this is mostly a joke in terms of how much it affects overall performance.

<!--QuoteBegin-lordofduct

BUT what if I used bus mastering. Would that allow direct write from the NIC to the IDE controller?[/quote]Only in principle. For this to be even remotely realistic, the NIC would at a minimum need to be able to transfer partial packets via DMA, do its own CRC32, and allow direct reading of the incoming packet buffer without jumping through a bunch of hoops. Even then, it would require so much low-level coordination among the network driver, TCP/IP stack, filesystem driver, and ATA adapter driver that no sane OS is likely to ever implement it. Perhaps you could go troll the MenuetOS forums claiming it's not possible; someone might write a proof-of-concept driver just to prove you wrong.

 

[lordofduct]

Aside from this server... I have another computer I turned into a File Server for my parents house, but a problem occured during setup and configuration.

Now check this...

First it is a P3 533mhz Gateway machine

I am using Ubuntu Server Breezy Badger 5.10

I have it hooked to my router along with 3 other computers (1 on XP, 1 on 2000 Pro, 1 on Ubuntu desktop Warty Warthog)

When I turn on this 4th comp with Breezy Badger my cable modem goes out and I can't go online. I turn the computer off and my modem instantly starts connecting back to the web. I tried it 3 times to make sure... and yep, when this comp is on my internet goes dead!

Has anyone heard of this before? I called Adelphia and the guy was like "what? who the fuck uses Linux?"

I'm at a lost... I need to find a way around this if I plan on building this file server for my parents house.

(oh... as an addition... I realize now it probably isn't ubuntu causing it because the internet was knocked out all through partitioning and install of Breezy Badger)

 

[lordofduct]

scratch all that...

it had nothing to do with the install or anything... my NIC was shorting out on the case probably sending a bad signal to the modem.

 

[slinga]

LoD: Weird problem. The only time I ever saw anything like that was when I was helping my friend with his network. He had one of the old Linksys Router/Switches that had the Uplink port built in. Basically he was using all the ports on switch, and you can only use EITHER the uplink or the last port on the switch, not both together. Pain in the ass to debug

 

[ExCyber]

Originally posted by slinga

He had one of the old Linksys Router/Switches that had the Uplink port built in. Basically he was using all the ports on switch

They still sell those, it's just not the Linksys brand anymore. They seem to have reserved the Linksys name for wireless stuff and now the wired stuff is "Network Everywhere".

 

[lordofduct]

I have 2 of those router/switches actually. I have no use for them.

 

[ExCyber]

I have one too. I use the uplink port when I need to hook something up with a crossover cable.