Re: [gentoo-user] [Offtopic] Lightweight server distro for an old motherboard

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:53:47 +0800
Andrew Lowe <agl@×××××××.au> wrote:

> On 08/29/12 12:42, kwkhui@××××.net wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:57:07 +0800
> > Andrew Lowe <agl@×××××××.au> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >> 	Anyone got any suggestions for a lightweight server distro
> >> for an old motherboard? I've got one of the VIA mini-ITX boards,
> >> SP13000, and want to whack something light onto it. It will be
> >> working as a file/media server and will be headless, hence will be
> >> fiddled via ssh. Obviously there are the usual suspects, debian,
> >> centos, but does anyone have any recommendations viv a vis a
> >> stripped down distro, sort of like Lubuntu is to Ubuntu?
> >>
> >> 	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> >>
> >> 		Andrew
> >
> > Well, if you are only going to need it as an NAS, why not try
> > FreeNAS? OK, its kernel is BSD rather than Linux, but that
> > shouldn't be a problem.
> >
> > Kerwin.
> >
>
> 	Thanks, I'll look into that.

FreeNAS comes *highly* recommended. It isn't cli driven though, it's a
django framework on nginx and runs off a memory stick. Resource usage
is next to nothing and it makes an awesome media server. It ships with
NFS, CIFS and FTP support and has plugins for dlna, firefly and
transmission. With the benefit that you don't have to build any of it,
write a 160M image to a memory stick, reboot, configure storage drives
and away you go.

I would advise that you not use ZFS on an old machine though, ZFS likes
*lots* of RAM. Rather use the FreeBSD default of UFS.

The screenshot is one of mine, a media server running on an HP
Proliant miniserver. No matter what I throw at that thing, it just
keeps laughing at me and asking if that's all I got....  


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com