Jack Scott's Blog

Last night I succeeded in setting up on my server the IMAP protocol (with the help of my sysadmin friend Hamzah). It turned out not to be too difficult, once I fixed my silly configuration mistake (setting the mail directory to /var/mail instead of /var/spool/mail). I’ve still got a bit of configuration to do, mainly editing a few security settings and such. It seems Debian comes almost configured correctly out of the box. This seems to happen with quite a few packages.

Before setting up IMAP (which is, for those not in the know, an email protocol), I was accessing the mail on my server using POP3. POP3 works well, but only if you are always using the same computer all the time. Since the email messages are stored on the local machine using POP3, it is hard to track them across computers. IMAP stores the emails on the server, and each local machine uses the IMAP server as a reference.

Now that I am using IMAP, I can access my mail from virtually anywhere, without having to drag around my laptop. In the near future, I’m hoping to set up webmail on the server as well. I might even write my own, depending on how adventurous I feel. I mean, how hard can it be?

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Upon request, here is some more information on how my file server is coming along. Last week I ordered a a Seagate 1TB HDD (of the latest revision, released a short time ago). It would have been preferable to buy all eight at once, but I lacked the money to buy them all at once, and I need the file server to be up and running.

The choice of brand of hard drives was difficult. Because of differences in platter density (and thus overall size), you can’t mix and match brands. Being the stupidly pedantic person I am, it’s not something I would have done anyway. I first considered Seagate, but the adventures (read: complete data loss) that a few other people at work have had with Seagate 1TB hard drives somewhat put me off. Western Digital was also an option, mostly because they have lower power requirements. This means two things: lower heat (and thus less noise), and a lower overall power requirement. For a server that is going to be on most (if not all) of the time, both these factors are quite important to consider. In the end though, I went with Seagate. I’ve never had any problems with them in my past, and I am hoping that they have fixed their problems with faulty control boards.

Only having one hard drives to begin with means I can’t begin with a RAID 5 array. I currently have my controller set to use my single drive as a JBOD disk. This obviously isn’t optimal, as my RAID controller will have to do an online upgrade of the RAID array. Apparently, this is in the feature set, so I thought I’d take advantage of it. I’ll let you know how it goes. I paid enough for it (Highpoint RocketRaid 2320 for ~$360AUD) that I trust it.

At this stage, it was time to configure my (non-) RAID array, FTP, and Samba. Configuring FTP was fine, the RAID array was tolerable (involved recompiling kernel with a few patches, etc), but Samba was a complete pain in the rear end. In the end, then, I went with Windows Vista Business. I was erring on buying a copy before to use on the server, and problems with Samba and so on just drove me over the edge.

This also allowed me to go back to my original RAID setup. After switching the cables over, I created a RAID 0 (fast stripe) on my JMicron controller for the two 80GB drives. This gives me an extremely fast Vista installation to 160GB of space. After installing the Highpoint management software, I then had my file server up and running, to a degree.

Final configuration involved installing AVG, setting up remote desktop (so I can administer changes from my laptop without having to attach a screen), installing Service Pack 1 for Vista, and disabling a few unnecessary services that slow down network transfer speeds (see this guide). After all that, I now have a decent, centralised place to store all my data. The only complaint is the noise produced by my gigabit switch (of course I had to buy a fan-cooled model).

Pictures coming soon (when I can be bothered finding a working camera).

I’m currently in the process of building myself a new home file server, to act as a storage medium for my MP3 music collection, my father’s business document backups, as well as to do compiles of software projects I’m working on.

For this, I’ve basically taken my old desktop computer (sans high-end graphics card) and place it in an Antec rack-mount case. After adding an expensive RAID card and a few hard drives, I have the hardware ready to go (though I am still contemplating the purchase of a PCI-based ADSL interface card).

Naturally, Debian was the first choice of operating system. Although I toyed with the idea of Windows Vista Business enough to almost go out and buy a copy, I decided:

1. It wasn’t worth the $140 just to have the use of Remote Desktop instead of SSH.
2. In the future, I may also want to use the server as an ADSL gateway, wireless access point, compile box, TeX environment, web server, etc. Vista can’t be made to do any of that easily.

Installing Debian was an interesting experience. I originally had the two 80GB Seagate hard drives installed on the onboard JMicron RAID controller (to run in RAID 1 for extra dependability). I couldn’t find drivers for this chipset that my Debian install disc would like. I then changed to using the JMicron controller in plain IDE-compatibility mode. Debian picked up only one hard drive. I’m still bemused by how this is possible: both the BIOS and a UBCD4Win disc pick up two. I then switched the hard drives and plugged them into the ICH9 controller. Debian picked up both of them, and so far is working fine. Although the ICH9 chip on my motherboard (a GA-P35-DS3) doesn’t support RAID, I’m still fairly happy. Anything I really want to keep will be stored on the RAID set managed by the RocketRAID card.

During the install process (and with all these changes of plan), it was great to have one of my Linux-savvy friends, Chris Neugebauer, on hand. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the #debian channel on Freenode. On both the occasions I asked questions, I was just plain ignored. Now, I know they don’t owe me anything, but a simple “Sorry, no idea, you’re on your own” would have been nice.

But apart from that minor downside, both the hardware and software are going really well so far. I’ll probably follow up with another article once I’ve finished further my home network. I still want to buy a few more parts…