Recent content by msl

As a very general reference for where things live on Unix-based operating systems, including Linux, this Wikipedia page may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard#Directory_structure. To make an Ubuntu server machine work as a "BitTorrent server", I have installed...

If you are going the Ubuntu route then you will find decent documentation on setting up a RAID array using mdadm at http://raid.wiki.kernel.org/. Setting up Samba shares for fileserving duties is as easy as installing Samba (if it is not already installed) and configuring your network shares by...

The advantage of redundant RAID (e.g. RAID1) is that, if one disk fails, you won't suffer any downtime or data loss. This is different from backup. If something stored on the RAID array is accidentally deleted then it is gone. If you have a backup then you may still be able to recover the...

Personally I would just use Linux software RAID. Cheaper and without the compatibility worries of a RAID card, and works fine for my home NAS.

Linux software RAID 5 should work fine. It doesn't rely on any RAID capabilities on the motherboard.

There are some performance figures and links for Linux software RAID here: https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Performance

I think you might not have got the point I was making about the RAID configurations you are proposing. Your RAID 1 configuration is cheaper because you are only paying for half the storage space compared to the RAID 5 and 10 configurations. RAID 1 and RAID 10 cost the same.

It is worth pointing out that your RAID level comparisons are not like-for-like. Your RAID 1 (2 disk) configuration will give you 1 disk worth of storage. Your RAID 5 (3 disk) configuration will give you 2 disks worth of storage. Your RAID 10 (4 disk) configuration will give you 2 disks...

If you want hardware RAID then I think you will need a RAID controller card. Motherboard RAID is usually reliant on software and is not true hardware RAID. However, why do you need hardware RAID? Software RAID works very nicely in Linux with any modern CPU, saves you money, and doesn't tie...

If overall cost is your motivation then implementation cost is just as important as running costs. For example, there is not much value in spending an extra $50 on a device that will save you $10 in electricity each year.

Another possibility (not necessarily a recommendation!)... If a printer can be located close enough to the router to be connected with an Ethernet cable, you could buy a printer with a built-in Ethernet connection. You don't actually need the printer to have built-in wireless capability for...

Gigabit devices connected to the gigabit switch be able to talk to each other at gigabit speeds, regardless of the router or any other devices you connect.

Yes, that is exactly the bug I was talking about. It does not exist on my system.

I am using Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit server with ext4 on a RAID10 array (not RAID5). I tried to replicate the large file corruption bug by copying large files to/from the ext4 partition and comparing checksums before entrusting data to it. All the checksums were fine and I couldn't reproduce any...

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the hassle of trying to setup NFS on a Windows machine. I would just use SMB. I don't know what the performance of different NFS implementations on Windows are like compared to SMB. I can tell you that when copying a large file (8GB) between a Windows...