home server

tw3ak

Happy Holidays,

I've got an old full sized tower that I want to change into a nice home server. it's an old AM2 system and the motherboard is fried. I wish to be able to backup images, and data, as well as stream movies and also run zoneminder for security off this one server, not sure if I need to virtualize it or just add the proper programs. Also I would like to save some money on electricity as this will run all the time.

any Ideas would be apprieciated.

mfillpot

I would in this case break the tasks into two distinct groups, security and data, because the security server will be a large target and you don't want a hacking target to house personal data. I would make the physical system for the data and setup a virtual machine for security, the basis for this is a precaution is that if the security server goes down the data OS will still be accessible and you will have the ability to reboot the security server from a virtual snapshot thus making sure that if the security server is compromised you can quickly recover to a stable state.

As for energy savings, most distro include the capability to use cpu frequency scaling in the kernel, so you should be able to set your physical machine to use the frequency scaling to reduce energy usage and reduce heat when the systems are not in high demand. You can also utilize the functions in bios to disable all unneeded components and remove the monitor, keyboard and mouse from the system to use it as a headless server for additional power savings.

tw3ak

If slackware assumes I'm smart then what does LFS do? Assume I'm a masochist ?

mfillpot

In my opinion Slackware assumes that you are smart enough to know what you are doing and do adequate research, LFS assumes that you have a solid gameplan and it is windows that assumes that you are a masochist because it keep violating you in ways that you didn't know were possible starting with he EULA

Now back to the true discussion, do you have any feedback about my recommendation?

tw3ak

I'm not "sure" that you are fully aware of what I'm doing with zoneminder..... it's a webcam security system for my home?, I'm not sure why that would be a target, but I guess someone would find a challenge and I would follow your advise.

the data that would be stored on my home server would be images of the computers we have. and incremental data backups. Be aware this is a blue collar home, no technocrats here, I'm not sure they could even spell it. I do use linux for access to my debit card accounts and bill pay that could be hijacked .... would be interested in the best way to secure that info. My girlfriend uses Ubuntu , all she does is play online games over the web and send email, that's it. My Son in Law just plays his xbox and hates the fact that the only home computer he has access to is a Ubuntu linux machine and fails to see why I like it more , but 99% of his time is playing xbox not job for over a year and he's 30 years old. ( wife supports him) she uses windows vista and won't change. Then there is my work laptop that I'm planning on replacing myself... when the funds are available it runs xp but again it's just over the web so I'm fairly sure that I can do what I need to do without the home office realizing that I've changed over to linux....

I would also like to be able to stream media over this same machine if at all possible. So if I count right that would be 3 uses...
backups, stream media and web cam video capture ( zoneminder ). maybe 3 cams.

mfillpot

A webcam security system, that is definitely something that you want on a failover system, see if you can script the host OS to check for operation in the security VM and restart it if a failure is detected.

The target factor can be quite high, people can use the captured video to track schedules or just to have fun they can reset your webcam server to feed the video over the web so your surveillance is publicly visible in real-time. Some crackers aren't into the game for profits, instead it is a namesake in which they will do all they can to display their abilities publicly which makes your video server a good target.

But if you want to be completely safe you can do both in virtual machines with error checking scripts in place, this way you can lockdown the supporting host and use it only for integrity testing, scripted maintenance and to reboot the VMs when necessary.