My first/Your first server

[mielke22x]

So I graduated from college and now more than ever do I want to build my own linux server. I have decided on having multiple applications running just for the heck of it. I have chosen xubuntu(until i hear of a better option) for my server and want to setup a fileserver, phpmyadmin, mysql, website, and ftpserver.

When do you build your first server and what did you do with it?

 

[Nothinman]

If you're going to use Ubuntu you should probably just use an LTS release and skip X all together. It'll be a rougher start, but you'll have to edit config files or most of those services anyway so getting to know nano, or even better, vim will be a good idea.

And consider Debian, since you're looking at building a server instead of a desktop you're not going to care about the minute changes Ubuntu makes to their desktop packages.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Debian!!!

 

[Net]

first server was a p54c 90mhz running slackware.

ran a chess engine for people to play against on fics

 

[Lorthreth]

AMD K6-2+ 400MHz running Slackware 9.

Used for IRC mostly and testing PHP.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd probably use Ubuntu with a gui because that's what I'm familiar with. If I really wanted to learn it though, I'd go with Debian as others suggested.

 

[Nothinman]

I'd probably use Ubuntu with a gui because that's what I'm familiar with. If I really wanted to learn it though, I'd go with Debian as others suggested.

The only thing is that while the GUI install will be slightly simpler, although I find the ncurses installer in Debian really simple too and just not as pretty, there's not many GUI tools for administering things like Samba, vsftp, etc so you'll need to edit config files or use a web admin tool most of the time anyway.

 

[lxskllr]

The only thing is that while the GUI install will be slightly simpler, although I find the ncurses installer in Debian really simple too and just not as pretty, there's not many GUI tools for administering things like Samba, vsftp, etc so you'll need to edit config files or use a web admin tool most of the time anyway.

The gui is like a security blanket for me. I like knowing it's there. I'd rather open a terminal inside a gui than run everything from the prompt at the start. I'm very visual with my computer usage. I have an easier time remembering things when they have an icon, and physical location, rather than remember commands and switches to type in. I can wind my way through menus fairly quickly that would likely frustrate a cli power user.

 

[Satyrist]

ClearOS (Formerly ClarkConnect) might be another one to consider. Granted, it is based off of CentOS, but has been easy to configure for those less experienced with server administration.

 

[jasonjas]

My first server was Squid (proxy cache) running on Ubuntu. I've moved to Debian since then.

 

[Maximilian]

Hardware is in sig, it runs windows server 2008 R2 which i got free by being a student, it just stores everything and streams stuff to the 360 when needed, it also has tversity any transcoding if that needs to be done.

 

[heymrdj]

First was a AMD K6-400Mhz with 192MB RAM running Debian used for testing/compiling ISPConfig on the dev team and running a proxy/cache server, as well as acting as a Debian apt-get repository as i did testing. My tests frequently required 50-60 Debian installs a week, so the local repository saved me alot of time. It had a MASSIVE 40GB drive I stole from another dieing system .

Server 2 (upgrade) thanks to the donation of a church member was a PIII 550E (stock 550mhx) overclock to I believe 798Mhz running 768MB RAM. Same functions as the above server.

Server 3 for WHS and early virtualization testing is a AMD Athlon X2 5600+ overclocked to 2.9Ghz and running 4GB of RAM. Disks include an IDE 160 and 320GB, and SATA 500GB, 2 1TB, and 2 2TB.

Server 4 HP DL380G3 with 6 160GB Scuzzy drives (15k RPM), 6GB of RAM, and 2 2.8Ghz processors. It was a speed demon for it's used price of 190$ shipped.

Server 5, my baby . Antec 900 chassis running MSI 890GX mainboard with an AMD PhenomII X6 1055T with 8GB DDR3, running 8 500GB WD Black 7200RPM drives in two Netstor SAS cages on RAID 10, attached to a LSI MegaRAID 8308ELP w/battery cache.

I'm working on Server 6 now, it'll have 2 Xeon 3.2Ghz processors (netburst/galatian) with 8GB DDR1 ECC RAM and a few SATA drives in RAID 1. The board will have PCI-e, I plan to add two 9800GT's in SLI for number crunching. I would say for your first server go this route, you can get alot for very cheap. A full server for around 400 dollars with dual processors/graphics cards. Granted my 6 core will wipe the floor with it, but my 6 core cost a whole lot more to build.

 

[velvetpants]

ubuntu is more of a user-friendly, easy setup distro then a stable, lightweight server distro.
Sure it might ship with everything you need, but there's also a bunch of stuff you don't need.

I recommend just going for a lightweight slim distro and just install the packages you're gonna be using.

 

[Khyron320]

First server was a P3 450mhz running windows 2000.

Not all of us came from a 100% nix background =P

I ran mIRC on it at home and a privet counterstrike server for my buddies.

My first dedicated linux server was Fedora Core 3. P3 700mhz with 768mb ram and as many hard drives as i could cram into it.

 

[VinDSL]

When do you build your first server and what did you do with it?

OMG!!!

My first server was a single-line dial-up BBS -- Searchlight, on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III -- 300 baud Hayes - mid 80's.

My second server was a multi-line dial-up BBS -- Wildcat!, on a Kaypro PC (IBM clone) -- a mix of 1200/2400 baud Hayes modems initially -- upgraded to USR Courier HSTs in late 80's -- traded them in for USR V.Everythings in mid 90's. USR had a great discount program for BBS operators (aka sysops)!

LoL!

EDIT

You know...

It's funny how little things have changed. In the olden times, we had message boards, online games, chat, and offered downloads -- same as today. We had 15 CDs full of freeware/shareware online, at the end of the era. (3 CD changers - 3 proprietary CD readers)

The only difference was, our universe was much smaller then, prior to the web.

Local users were the name of the game. The only time I used 'long distance' was for FidoNet message relays (early form of email), and updating the Mustang BBS software.

 

[PCTC2]

My first server was a Windows Server 2003 running ActiveDirectory and Network Home Directories.

My first Linux server was Ubuntu 6.06LTS. I ran Linux before, but never as a server. My 6.06 server ran a web server, MySQL databases, and a MySQL-based media server. It also ran VMware Server 1.0. Everything was done via GUI but I learned a lot of Bash Scripting and doing things over SSH.


----

Finally, everything has evolved into my production level servers.

My Dual Xeon E5520 box runs on RHEL running CrashPlan Pro server (enterprise backup), VMware Server (running Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 virtualized for ActiveDirectory and Printer Sharing, along with RHEL, CentOS and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS virtual machines.) running Matlab, Apache, Ruby-on-Rails w/ nginx/passenger, NFS sharing, and a Media Streaming server. It has a GUI installed but I don't use it. I just SSH in to do anything. Or locally I just use X to have multiple terminals on the same window.
My Mac Mini runs Mac OSX Server 10.6 running OpenDirectory/LDAP, Network Home Sharing, Printer Sharing, Wikis, and Remote Desktop Task Server.
My E3200 runs a gateway server based on CentOS handling NAT, firewall, and a few other basic services. Has a Web Interface but every advanced requires manual configuration.
My Atom runs NexentaStor for ZFS file server/backup server. No GUI.
I even rent out from RackSpace Cloud for CentOS, RHEL, and Ubuntu servers running webservers, proxy servers, and mail servers. No GUI on any of these suckers.

GUIs are great for learning. You have a web browser for testing your services, even space for multiple terminals and text editors to multitask, rather than one terminal session per session. But overall, I find it more efficient to use my workstation to SSH into all of the servers to do anything. You learn a lot by fiddling with config files, and BASH scripting.

 

[postaled]

... Acer with an AMD K6-2 running Debian with 256 MB of ram and a 10gb hard drive.

I spent many hours learning things experimenting with that computer.

 

[skyking]

Socket 3 with the vaunted evergreen tech overdrive module, sporting the latest in AMD processors. 133 MHZ of blazing power
The mobo supported exactly two of the dozens of ram sticks we had. We tried all of them only to be greeted by the beeps of death. So there it was, a 133 with 16MB. Toss a couple of 10baseT nics in it, a 330 MB drive and FreeBSD 2.something and viola! It was my broadband firewall/router for years. I still have the box out in the shed and use it for a jackstand as needed.
IT does run, although the disk is slowly dying.

 

[Kirby]

The only thing is that while the GUI install will be slightly simpler, although I find the ncurses installer in Debian really simple too and just not as pretty, there's not many GUI tools for administering things like Samba, vsftp, etc so you'll need to edit config files or use a web admin tool most of the time anyway.

Yeah, but you can always open up a browser to find out how to do things.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, but you can always open up a browser to find out how to do things.

Yea, but I'd rather do that on my workstation than the server itself.

 

[skyking]

Yea, but I'd rather do that on my workstation than the server itself.

agreed, console on a server is not what I'd want in a home environment. I prefer to tuck them away out of sight and earshot. I have console on my current server only because I have a KVM and the server is tiny.

 

[Crusty]

agreed, console on a server is not what I'd want in a home environment. I prefer to tuck them away out of sight and earshot. I have console on my current server only because I have a KVM and the server is tiny.

I used to go so far as to setup a vncserver on my servers, if they were on my local network.... but I haven't done that in years, now that I'm really comfortable on the CLI.

 

[Emulex]

bsdi 1.1 and linux (very much beta). with apache 0.65 hacked with the australian guy's ssl code[ssleay] rocking a netscape secure server certificate (very much illegal at the time given the patents?).

when i was using linux i had to patch each new kernel by hand with virtual host mods - bsdi just handled it and didn't crash as much. probably why i'm still fond of sunos/*bsd/osx(darwin=mach bsd)

- nobody uses console any more - ILO2/3 - all hp servers have had it. if you are ever poor let me know i probably have a stack of ilo keys laying around from servers put to pasture(destroyed). hell ilo keys from a 10 year old server plug into a brand new dl380 g7 lol.. shhh.

essentially you can take a machine and boot that mofo and remote load it across the (world) using virtual everything. it is the best solution there is.

Man some dude just sold a dual socket dl385 with 3x146gb 2.5" for $200 locally. that would have been a first sweet server. redundant power,ilo, sas with caching raid controller. spot for a 75w video card (Geforce 240).

Using a server for console is bad mojo - thats why you had RDP or VNC. It was always really easy to hit ctrl-alt-del on a unix box and in RDP doing a shutdown -r in the wrong windows ewww. ouch.

I'd suggest a core HP server (1 gen old maybe?) with ESXi 4.1 and a beater for vcenter(or another esxi boxen). vcenter 4.1 is a hoss eats up 4gb real quick. you can virtualize it but that presents problems when you are doing a long job like patching the host itself. you'd have to move it to another server so it doesn't reboot mid-way.

and good battery backup !! lots of it to do a contained shutdown of all the devices.

 

[PCTC2]

I'd suggest a core HP server (1 gen old maybe?) with ESXi 4.1 and a beater for vcenter(or another esxi boxen). vcenter 4.1 is a hoss eats up 4gb real quick. you can virtualize it but that presents problems when you are doing a long job like patching the host itself. you'd have to move it to another server so it doesn't reboot mid-way.

and good battery backup !! lots of it to do a contained shutdown of all the devices.

Yeah. VMware ESXi 4.1 is great. Virtualize pretty much anything. But make sure you get supported hardware. I didn't have supported NICs and getting drivers was impossible. But if you screw anything up, just blow the Virtual Machine away and start a fresh. I currently use the EOL'd VMware Server 2.0 because I have a host OS and the way I use the local storage isn't exactly the best for VMware ESX. But if you virtualize, you could try out almost every distro. That's what I did with VMware Server 1.0. Had to have a Windows Controller back then. For ESXi, you'll still need a Windows box separate to run VMware vSphere Client on Windows to connect to it. I'm running around 12 VMs right now. Trying each distro without the need to wipe each time, and the ability to keep the distros you like is nice while still trying new ones.

Also, yes, as Emulex stated, get a UPS. They're lifesavers and you get to cleanly shut down each time (especially if you're not running enterprise grade stuff. For RAID you need battery backup for power outages. The same with SSD's without a supercap. It gives them time to write what's in their buffer or cache into place. I don't have specific battery backup for my RAID but I have a dedicated UPS for the server that will tell it to shutdown with 10 minutes of runtime left.).

 

[postaled]

Not really sure why exactly but personally i've been preferring Xen server over Esxi recently. Well for home machines and screwing around at work anyway.

I'd also give that a try along with esxi