Re: [PLUG] EXTERNAL: Re: Tried of Windows...

["Grabowy, Chris" <chris.grabowy@lmco.com>]

The media is on other drives, so I would just let the Linux installer format the boot drive with whatever it wanted to use.

Since the media is still on the other drives (NTFS) do I still need Samba for the other Linux (XBMC) boxes to access the media files?

Wouldn't they be accessible with NFS or something?

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces@lists.phillylinux.org [mailto:plug-bounces@lists.phillylinux.org] On Behalf Of Paul L. Snyder
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 12:58 PM
To: Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List
Subject: EXTERNAL: Re: [PLUG] Tried of Windows...

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, Grabowy, Chris wrote:
 
> So my questions are....which version of Linux for a simple file server?
> Any gotchas?  Any thoughts?  I'll take any advice.  I want to make 
> this weekend project go smoothly as possible and solve this silly 
> problem once and for all.  Ideally, I just want to install Linux over 
> Windows and then reconfigure the XBMCs.

Just about any well-supported Linux distro will work just fine for a simple file-server.  Ubuntu currently has a very large install base, so you'll find it easy to find help and support.  Ubuntu Server would be a reasonable choice.  You could also take a look at something like the FreeBSD-based FreeNAS (which is designed specifically as a file server platform), but it's probably a bit more complicated if you just want to get something up and running fast.

  http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

When you say "install Linux over Windows", do you mean into the same partition?  Since you've said that your partitions are NTFS, that's probably not the best idea.  I've had no problems mounting NTFS partitions under current versions of Linux, but I'd suspect it would be a pretty unfortunate choice to try use one as a boot or root partition.

If you can't easily reformat to ext4, you can try shrinking the NTFS partition using a tool like GParted.  Read up on the tips before you try.
I have done this successfully in the past, though usually on a factory-install of Windows.

   http://gparted.sourceforge.net/faq.php

Apart from repartitioning, current Linux distros tend to be very easy to install these days.  Once you've got it up and running, you'll just need to configure Samba to serve up your media files, and you should be off and running.

Paul
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug