About all your data on Windows machines - do you do any fancy stuff with file permissions on them? Or is it all pretty much just plain accessible by your main user?

If you do fancy stuff with file permissions (typical in a multi-user corporate environment), then it can be more trouble than it's worth to do backups to a non-Windows OS. But if you're mostly just a single user environment, or a small number of users (typical in a home family environment), then it's not a big deal.

You could use something like rsync or rsnapshot for automated backups with incremental history. I like "pulling" backups rather than "pushing" them. In other words, you set up the backup server to "pull" files from (read only, restricted) file shares on the client machines. That centralizes where all the "stuff" is.

My Current setup is fairly simple. We only have a few users. The file server is just that - a common place to store project files we want to share. One database program we use can be networked using an Apache server and that software is included in the database package. It is multi-platform so I can setup the server and install the user program on a Windows or Linux machine and save the data to the Apache server. A couple of other things I am considering are VPN and a personal cloud storage scheme. The VPN for remote access and the cloud because I am curious about it. I would like to watch a movie or listen to music from any local machine with the movie DVD or file on any other machine. Also as I said earlier a mix of Windows and Linux machines. I want to wean myself off of Microsoft products but I can't get away entirely because some applications will not run on Linux at this time.

I have decided to go with Ubuntu server and desktop as my standard. I have not installed the server software yet. I am working on a Linux desktop tutorial to get back up to speed on Linux. Before I retired I supported some IBM AUX (Unix) desktop machines but it has been a while. I didn't work much on the server setup side of things but there is a lot of info available online so I should be OK when I get into it. After I get the Linux server up and running I am going to decommission the Windows server. Hopefully I can do all I need to do on one Linux server box. It's not high volume with lots of users but I want some of the features that you would expect from a real high volume server. in addition as I said earlier I want to be able to re-image my desktop machines from a backup should one go down or get a ransomware virus. The server is a home server not a commercial server.

Thanks all, I appreciate the help you are all giving. I am old and tired so I am only going to do this once. I keep young in mind because I still like to learn but I retired from the computer game several years ago and I have other interest now. I enjoy woodworking and all this computer stuff takes time away from my wood shop so I want to get the computer stuff out of the way for good so I can get back to making sawdust.

Thanks again.

Between Debian and Ubuntu you can't go wrong with either. Some will say don't use Ubuntu but in my modest experience with home admin it has been as stable as can be. In the last year I can count the number of issues on one hand. I think that's pretty good for a 24/7 box that my whole lan relies on for dhcp, dns, media sharing, mysql, mythtv, 4 minecraft servers, and a backup target.

I went with Ubuntu because I didn't want to compile Mythtv. It hasn't let me down yet.

I chose Ubuntu because it has a large install base and it is well documented. If I learn it well and run into something it can't handle I will know enough by then to know which distribution will solve my problem. I don't see that happening but that's the theory. Windows boxes need to be rebooted every week if you want them to run right. When I worked at Boeing we ran a report on all of our AIX machines and 80% had been up for over 2 years and some were going on 8 years without rebooting. I'm going to look into the Mythtv thing. I use Directv and DVDFab now. Not so much looking to replace Directv but they ocassionally have something I would like to keep in my personal library. DVDFab is one of those Windows only things I use and if I could find a Linux replacement that would be one less reason to keep Windows.

Let us know how things go for you.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

I was waiting on a few new (to me) computers. I picked up three used computers. One was a server with one Terabyte of RAID on 6 drives. I am going to rebuild that one using Windows Essentials 2012-R2. I will be used for a special project and only contain files related to that project. Since it is running RAID I don't need to back it up and it will clear a lot of space on the old server that I want to decommission.

One of the new computers will be my Ubuntu server. I am going to install Samba, Open SSH and Standard system utilities. The Linux server came with a 500gb HDD and I may add two external 5-T HDDs I have via USB. I may add more later but this is what I have to work with. The thought here is to use one external drive as a backup for the data on my several windows machines and the other external drive for my file server data although I have one open slot in the new box and I may put a 5-T drive in there and use the external for Linux server backup.

After that is all done I am considering using the third machine as a media server for movies and music. I will not backup this machine but I do want access it from any other machine in my house. Not sure the best way to do that yet so I am open to suggestions. Maybe a personal cloud? Any suggestions on media origination applications?

That's it, my grandiose plan. Yes I have lots of questions on how to do it all. Lots of unknowns for me. The biggest issue that I see now the external drives will behave. Will I be able to pull the external drives off of the server and access them on another machine? I'm sure it would require a Linux machine but I also plan to setup Linus on a USB at some point.

Once I get all my data sorted out and decide where it needs to go this scenario might get less complicated. I may find it is easier to use the external drives on the two critical Windows machines. If I clean out all the duplication and setup the media machine I won't have that much on the Ubuntu server if I do direct backups to my two Windows machines.

Thanks for wading through my ramblings. As always any suggestions or ideas are appreciated.

Michael

RAID is not a replacement for backup. RAID is to maintain uptime in the event of (some) failures. It will not save you if something deletes or corrupts data. If your RAID has 1TB of data, it's definitely worth your while to devote at least 1TB of one of your 5TB backup drives to it (more than 1TB is good if you use something like rsnapshot hardlinks to maintain history snapshots).

Definitely put at least one of the 5TB drives internal rather than connected by USB. Superior performance, superior cooling, superior interface reliability (in my experience, USB interfaces are far more likely to go bad than internal SATA interfaces).

I'd swap that 500GB drive so it's a USB drive instead. I'd use the 500GB drive only occasionally, as maybe an offline backup perhaps stored elsewhere in a waterproof safe. Take advantage of USB's strengths (the ability to hot-plug ad hoc) while mitigating USB's weaknesses (poor performance matters less with less data, and only using it briefly to rsync incremental snapshots mitigates cooling issues).

That said, I did borrow an NTFS formatted 5TB external USB drive which I used without issue for months. I used it as an rsync backup of...well...everything. All of my data easily fit in it. Performance wasn't as good as an internal drive, and I don't think it ever got particularly warm. So, it may not have been such a big deal.

NTFS is good if you want to be able to access the data on a Windows machine later. But you give up a lot of capabilities with NTFS. Not having hardlinks is a bummer if you want to maintain historical snapshots, rather than just a single snapshot at the time of the last sync. (You can use rsnapshot or a simple cp -val source destination to make a snapshot copy using hardlinks...very little disc space, but it will keep a copy of any file which would have been deleted or overwritten by rsync later on.)

Yes, you should be able to.

Thanks for the advice IsaacKuo. I just noticed your from Red Stick. I was raised in Louisiana mostly Lafayette. I'm long gone now but I miss the people and food in Louisiana.

I will probably do backups on the Windows server once I start using it but it's not high priority at this time. The server is limited use and only has two users and I already have multiple copies of everything I will be putting on it. I don't have 1-T of data that was just the capacity of the machine. I don't think I will use it all but it's good to have. I got a great deal on the 3 machines and was pleasantly surprised when I fired up the server and found out how it was configured. It even came with all the documentation. I got the server and two Dell machines (i3 and i7) for $120 total so I was happy.

Michael

I'm having a few issues setting up my Ubuntu server 16.04.3

First issue is te network cards. The setup finds them and ask which is the main card and seems to install OK but it doesn't seem to work.

1. The network LAN cardis identified as -- ENP4s0 realtek Semiconductor RTLB8411 Gigabit Ethernet.
2. The wireless card is identified as -- WLP3s0 Qualcom Atheros AR9485 wireless network adapter.

I got the LAN card working but it doesn't show up in the list of computers in my Netgear Router. I was trying to setup a static IP. It does go out to the internet it's not in the attached devices list.
I tried setting up the Wireless but it is a total bust. During setup it saw my router and I logged on OK but after the first reboot nothing.

Idealy I would like to set up both wired and wireless to work but if I can't do that I would prefer the wireless because I could put the server anywhere and let it do it's thing.

One thing I think I am supposed to do is where the documention calls for lan0 or wlan0 I should probably replace that with enp4s0 or wlp350 since that's how they are identified during setup.

ANY words of wisdom would be great at this point. Do I need static IP? Can I use the wireless and setup automatic log on including the password when I boot up the server? Can this be done during my lifetime? Know where I can find some configuration scripts to use for setup?

Michael

If you are new to this, and used to the Windows way of doing things, then I would recommend you install a GUI desktop environment such as XFCE4, rather than trying to do things only via the command prompt.

In particular, the GUI Network Manager is a lot easier to work with for a newbie. It's pretty easy to click around and configure wired and wireless networking, at least for simple connectivity and relatively simple routing.

The default device names have indeed changed from things like eth0 to enp4s0.

As for static IP - I would generally recommend it, but you should be careful to NOT have both the wired connection and the wireless connection active at the same time, if they are set up to use the same static IP address. If there's an easy to use hardware switch to turn off the wireless adapter, this is pretty easy to do if you're careful to turn off the wireless adapter before plugging in the ethernet cord. Alternatively, you could set the Wired Connection to be DHCP, to prevent accidentally messing things up by plugging in the ethernet cord.

Unfortunately, the GUI Network Manager will NOT activate any connections at all until it is up and running. This means setting up your GUI Desktop Environment to automatically log you on. In a typical production server environment, this is not really acceptable. So, you'd have to bite the bullet and learn how to do things the console way at some point. Just to get things started, though, the GUI way should be good.

Of course, in a typical production server environment, it would be weird and inefficient to use a wireless connection rather than a wired connection.

Just to comment on the device name change in Ubuntu, it's easy to go back to the traditional naming of network interfaces if you want to.
You just have to tell udev the MAC address of the interface in a config file, and supply the name you want for it.

The file names are not important, unless you depend on a certain rule to be processed in sequence.

Here are my rule, to get back to "eth0" for the primary interface:

/etc/udev/rules.d/10-network.rules:
If your installation has several files in /etc/udev/rules.d/, be sure that the one you create has priority before others working on the same interface you are trying to rename to.
The execution sequence of the rules is based on filename sorting sequence, and should be easily understood.

Remember to modify all references in /etc/network/interfaces from "enp-something" to "eth0" before you reboot, otherwise Ubuntu will not enable the interface.

This is well documented on the internet, but I'm just mentioning it here to avoid linking to sources that will be lost later.

Thanks guys.

This is not a production server it's just a two sometimes three user home server. I intend to tie all my windows and apple devices together and setup a media server for whole house media access. As I rethink this I can still accomplish what I want using wired. I can just wire it up and stick the box under my desk. I don't really need wireless on this server. The mini tower came with the wireless card and it seemed like a neat idea when I started but I can wait until I know more about what I am doing. I just want this box to do what I want so it doesn't need to be complicated. The only reasion I am using this i3 box and not the i7 box is because the i3 has 4 USB 3.0 connectors I can use for the external 5T media and backup drives.

It is tempting to go back to a GUI interface but I am going to stick to the command prompt. The theory is the best way to learn a foreign language is live where ever they speak it. I am serious about learning Linux console and the only way to do it is to do it.

My first goal is to setup a functioning wired Samba server. It looks like the first step after a clean reinstall and doing the updates will be to rename the default name of the network card to default to eth0 since that's what Ubuntu expects for a name. What else do I need to do to make this a normal default install?

I really appreciate your help. Thanks again.

Michael

There is truly no need to rename the network card to eth0. There is no software which demands it be named eth0 or ethX or anything like that at all. You could name it "FredIsAKangaroo" and all of the software would be fine with that.

Since the "enp4s0" naming convention is what will be used from here on, you may as well just get used to it.

One thing you ought to set up at some point is ssh so you can remotely log in to your file server. If your regular workstation is Windows, that'll mean setting up Putty as the client. This gives you a text console interface for your remote server, but you won't have to physically switch to its display/keyboard. And you'll have convenient options to cut/copy/paste with a text editor and web browser in other windows. You're still learning how to use the text console interface and text console tools. You're just doing it in a smarter way that takes advantage of cut/copy/paste etc.

Anyway, sticking with wired connections will be good. For things like backups, the superior performance alone would likely make it worth it. That said, I do do a lot of incremental backups over wireless. Performance for my uses has been adequate.

Performance of an i3 CPU is extremely sufficient for a file server. CPU load on a file server is very low at all times.

Some times I feel like and idiot and other times I prove it.

When I started setting up the Linux server I plugged the network cable into a switch in my media center that I use for the smart TV etc. Well here comes the idiot part. That switch was plugged directly into the internet box and did not go through my router. Naturally my machine did not show up on the router if it is not connected to the router. DUH.

Now it is on the router and I am going to setup a static IP again and go from there.

Good suggestion on putty. I did install SSH and will setup putty before I move the computer off of my desk. I am also going to make sure all my network cables and switches run through my router.

Thanks for all your help. I should be back on track for the next 30 minutes or so.

Michael