Home Server on a budget

There are solid reasons for having your own file server at home or home office and Microsoft has made a pitch for this market with their Home Server. I'm frequently called on to rebuild clients Windows computers that have become ruined by spyware and I don't want to transfer their infected, spyware ridden files on to my own Windows desktop. I need a DMZ where I can put these infected files while I rebuild the Windows computer. I use Linux and Samba. It is a reasonable way to make your own home server. If you're not familiar with Samba I recommend that you read more about it here at http://www.samba.org. Basically for the unfamiliar Samba is an open source implementation of SMB/CIFS and provides various file and print services for Windows clients. It can run on Linux, Unix, AIX, BSD and Apple's Mac OS X Server.

As you may already know Linux is not affected in the same way by viruses and other malware as Microsoft products. Therefore it makes a great candidate for a file server in your home. Better yet, because of TCP/IP and Samba it can be a file server for both your Windows machines and a Macintosh if you have one on your home network. Microsoft's Home Server costs about $130-$170 to purchase and both Linux and Samba are free. Configuring Samba for your own network can be easy if you know what you're doing. If you don't it can easily turn into a nightmare. You really don't need a very powerful computer for your home server. An old Pentium II or Pentium III will work, but a newer Pentium 4 would be great too. In such a small server an IDE drive can function quite well, but the newer SATA drives will definitely speed up your access. Memory is important by can be very modest by today's standards. Two-hundred-fifty-six megabytes might be enough for a smaller network. You don't even need a GUI to have Samba function properly.

Depending on the distribution of Linux you are running you will need to download and install Samba if it is not already running. If you want each user to have their own directory then you will need to setup users on the Linux Samba box. Those user names must mirror the Windows users. So if you have Joe on Windows you must have Joe on the Linux side of the equation too and Joe's password must be the same too.

A very simple Samba configuration file would look like this.

[global]

workgroup=workgroup
server string = %h server (Home Server)
security=share

[storage]
comment = Home Folder
path = /home/don/Documents
read only = No
guest ok = Yes

Remember you can change the workgroup to whatever your workgroup name is. Perhaps the best way to implement this is to backup your original Samba configuration file. Do this by logging into your Linux computer. If you're using Ubuntu as I am you would open a terminal windows and issue the following set of commands, "cd /etc/samba/." That set of commands will put you in the correct directory for the Samba configuration file.

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