Saturday, November 18, 2006
How to Configure an $80 File Server in 45 Minutes
I use a modded Xbox and Xbox Media Center for playing media files across the network on my television and sound system. I also download large files, such as Linux ISOs, via BitTorrent. However, leaving my primary computer on all the time seemed like a waste of energy. I wanted a cheap, small headless machine that I could use as a Samba server and BitTorrent client so I could leave my workstation off when I wasn't using it.
I was in luck; HCDI Trading had a great "Fall Extravaganza" deal - a Dell OptiPlex GX150 Desktop for $47.91 (around $30 s/h). The specs:
- Desktop Form Factor (it fits on a shelf in a media center)
- Intel Celeron 700 MHz
- 128MB RAM
- 10GB HD
- CD-Rom
Not cutting edge, but perfect for what I needed and priced very reasonably. Instead of using X11 and remote clients, I felt that web interfaces would be optimal out of simplicity. If I configured the server as a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), then I could use web GUIs for configuration, administration, and file transfers.
Out of the popular Linux distributions, I'm most familiar with Gentoo and Ubuntu. Gentoo didn't seem appropriate; it would take hours and hours to get everything set up, configured and updated (even from a Stage 3 install), and any performance gain from the optimization would be negligible. Ubuntu has a history of reliability and ease of set up, so I used the Edgy Eft release as the basis my server.
The Applications
- Remote Console - OpenSSH
- The free version of the SSH connectivity tools. Use it for secure access to the console.
- Web Server - Apache
- It's free, fast, well supported and documented
- Network Fileshare - Samba
- Creates file shares that can be easily accessed from Windows. Notoriously obnoxious to configure by hand, the Samba Web Administration Tool (SWAT) simplifies the process immensely.
- Database - MySQL
- The popular free database server. While I can use a command line to administrate MySQL, I prefer using phpMyAdmin.
- P2P Client - BitTorrent
- TorrentFlux is a decent web interface for BitTornado. Useful for downloading Linux ISOs or media from places like LegalTorrents.com.
Directions
- Download and burn the Ubuntu Server 6.10 i386 install CD.
- Install Ubuntu Server
- When asked about Software Installation, choose LAMP.
- When the installation is finished, take out the CD (I flip it over and leave it in the drive for the next time I need it) and reboot.
- Logon as the regular user that you created during setup.
- Give root a password.
sudo passwd root
- We're going to modify the file sources list to allow us access to all the required files. Uncomment the edgy universe, edgy-security main restricted, edgy-security universe, edgy multiverse, edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse, and edgy-commercial main. In addition, Ubuntu leaves the install CD as one of the file sources after installation, so you'll need to remove the CD from the source list. Comment out the CD from the list and save.
sudo nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list
- Update apt-get to use the new sources.
sudo apt-get update
- Install OpenSSH server
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
- Turn off the computer.
sudo shutdown -h now
- Disconnect the monitor, keyboard, and set the computer wherever it's going to lurk for the next couple years.
- Turn on the computer and wait about a minute for it to boot.
- Using your preferred SSH client, connect to the machine. I prefer PuTTY for Windows.
- Install Samba and SWAT.
sudo apt-get install samba smbfs swat xinetd
- Create a Samba user.
sudo smbpasswd -a username
- Add SWAT to the xinet configuration and save.
sudo nano -w /etc/xinetd.d/swat
# description: SAMBA SWAT
service swat
{
disable = no
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
#should use a more limited user here
user = root
wait = no
server = /usr/sbin/swat
} - Reload Xinetd with the new configuration.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xinetd
- Verify that SWAT is up and running. If you don't get any response, start Googling.
sudo netstat -tap | grep swat
- Make the shared directory for TorrentFlux.
sudo mkdir /share
sudo mkdir /share/incoming
sudo chmod 777 /share/incoming/ - Create the Samba share. Using a web browser, go to http://hostname:901/shares
- path /share/incoming
- valid users - username
- read only - no
- Commit Changes
- Install phpMyAdmin
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
- Connect to phpMyadmin using a web browser - http://hostname/phpmyadmin
- Secure MySQL / phpMyAdmin
- login: root (no pass)
- Privileges
- Add a password to both root accounts
- Create a database for TorrentFlux
- Databases - Create New - torrentflux
- Install TorrentFlux
sudo apt-get install torrentflux
- Ignore the libphp-adodb message.
- Configure database for torrentflux with dbconfig-common? - yes
- Password - blank (generates random)
- Restart Apache? - Yes
- Configure TorrentFlux using a web browser - http://hostname/torrentflux/
- Username / Password - root / root
- Configuration
- Path - /share/incoming/
- Save
- Click My Profile
- Update your password
- Create a user account
- Admin - New User
- Remove the Apache default documents from web root.
sudo rm -Rf /var/www/apache2-default/
- Create a basic web launchpad for easy access your services.
sudo nano -w /var/www/index.php
<?php $hostname = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']; ?>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://<?php echo $hostname; ?>/torrentflux">Torrent Flux</a></li>
<li><a href="http://<?php echo $hostname; ?>/phpmyadmin">phpMyAdmin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://<?php echo $hostname; ?>:901/">SWAT</a></li>
</ul>
Post Mortem
Overall, the installation and configuration took me about 45 minutes to go from zero to a fully functional system. The Xbox can see the share, and I've got a new playground for web development. I would suggest cleaning up and securing that home page a bit; research .htaccess files to lock it down.
I put my file server in my media center underneath my router, and it takes up about the same space as a VCR. For $80, I feel that I've made an excellent investment.
Update - 11.19.2006 - I've been Dugg! Thank you all for your comments, compliments, corrections, criticisms, and suggestions!
About Me
- Jon Peck
- Jon Peck is a Zend Certified Engineer and Technology Support Professional for Campus Technology Services and the Center for Business & Community Development at the State University of New York at Oswego. He provides programming and web server administration for CTS, and programming and office support for CBCD. He has worked in various capacities for CTS since 1999, and was hired full-time following graduation cum laude from SUNY Oswego with a Computer Science BA in 2003.
Syndication
76 comments:
www.freenas.org
less than 10 min to set up and have running.
:-)
Very nice article, very complete. I sent it over to my bud who is having the fight of his life with XP crap the past few days. :)
Rex
very well written document...
Justin, I too use freenas, but it is only basic as a Samba and FTP share, it does not provide a complete webserver interface, you really should check out torrent flux. I infact have two servers, both a torrent flux and a freenas seperately, but was never able to get samba running on the torrentflux box until now thanks to this great guide!
However, I have a few questions, in your guide since the torrent flux directory is a samba share, any user can delete files?I would assume yes. Also, I was wondering, In my case my torrent flux server is only 15 gigs, and my NAS being 500, and I often download several large ISO's in one night and would like to be able to mount my NAS share on the unbuntu system so that torrentflux could use it as the default download directory. I do have the SMB share mounted under ubuntu, I just don't know what to put in the torrentflux directory specification box //freenas/dump? or what?I am quite confused
Thanks in advance =)
I don't think this is the appropriate forum to ask a technical question.
Chris
Munjal - use the command smbmount:
#man smbmount
that will tell you how to mount a samba share so it looks like a directory so you don't have to mess with the \\computer/asdf stuff
munjal - You can set certain Samba users to read only, or set read only as the default for all users. Under Shares - http://hostname:901/shares in the specific share configuration, there's the "read" and "write" list that you can specify users in. Utilize the man pages for additional information.
Thanks a lot everyone, great guide! Will show everyone at my LUG
Beautiful job in explaining the process. Really. Well done.
One quick question... any idea how to enter interactive mode during boot? I need to disable cpuspeed for my hardware.
ClarkConnect- GNU/Linux/Open Sourced based, free for home use.
"ClarkConnect is a powerful yet easy-to-use software solution that transforms off-the-shelf PC hardware into a dedicated Internet gateway and server. The software is a secure, reliable and cost effective solution.
Features
Our software offers a feature-rich server solution:
Internet Gateway
Firewall
VPN
E-mail
Bandwidth and P2P Manager
Multiwan
Intrusion Prevention
Web and FTP Servers
Antispam/Antivirus
Content Filtering
File and Print Services
Data backup
Groupware
Management and Monitoring
After deployment, our unique Gateway Services solution simplifies the management and maintenance of your system:
Mail Backup
Content Filter Updates
Remote System Monitoring
Security Audits and Updates
Automatic Software Updates
DNS and Domain Services"
Openfiler- GNU/Linux/Open Sourced based.
"Openfiler is a Storage Management Operating System. It is powered by the Linux 2.6 kernel and Open Source applications such as Apache, Samba, LVM2, ext3, Linux NFS and iSCSI Enterprise Target. Openfiler combines these ubiquitous technologies into a small, easy to manage solution fronted by a powerful web-based management interface. Openfiler allows you to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and/or Storage Area Network (SAN) appliance, using industry-standard hardware, in less than 10 minutes of installation time."
"Because life as a systems administrator is difficult enough as it is. Openfiler allows you to ease some of the pain by bringing together almost all storage networking protocols (CIFS, NFS, HTTP/DAV, FTP, iSCSI) into a single framework. So if your current pressure points arise from grappling with the task of providing secure and resilient storage to users, groups and computing resources in a multi-platform heterogeneous environment, Openfiler is the tool for you."
Hi, the command for SWAT should be as follows, yes?
sudo nano -w /etc/xinetd.d/swat
I had a problem using xinetd so i just used netkit-inet which seemed to work for me.
Although I'm an Ubuntu advocate, is this where I complain that Ubuntu Server STILL doesn't have any console, menu-based system administration tool (think like 'yast')? And oh, by the way, webmin sucks.
People with Ubuntu Server (and no GUI) would like to not have to type all these commands with switches to add and modify users and groups -- it gets tedious, especially if LDAP is involved. And admins would also like a tool where they can customize a standard Ubuntu desktop profile + Ubuntu Linux OS and deploy it all at once to hundreds of PCs currently running Windows, rebooting hopefully in 5 hours into Ubuntu desktop and having a standard, locked down profile customized by the admin.
Oh, and don't forget:
http://ebox-platform.com/
...it's Debian-based, designed in Spain, for an international audience, and has a super cool web admin interface. It's really well done, but is slightly beta here or there. Try it -- I think you'll be impressed. I would hope that Canonical would buy them out and merge this project in with Ubuntu Server.
chris - Good catch, thanks. I fixed it.
Not bad, Jon! Blogged it. Thanks for sharing. Tremendous!
I'm pretty linux dumb. What do I put for the hostname? I have tried the IP and username, as well as the name that I get when I type "hostname". What am I missing?
Hostname should be the local address to the computer. If you're using a router, then get a static ip (google "Static ip, ubuntu) and your hostname will be whatever you made your static ip to be.
What is the best (easiest) way to access files on the server from windows?
I made a mistake while configuring TorrentFlux with dbconfig-common , is there a way to restart the dbconfig-common from the beginning? I tried to apt-get remove torrentflux and then reinstall it but it doesn't let me restart the dbconfig-common. Thanks
Mike,
While I dont have this exact setup, I do have Ubuntu running a Samba server and I access from windows as a network drive. I'm pretty sure I got my instructions on configuring windows from howtoforge.com
Hope this helps.
Ryan
Mike - Samba creates network shares; from Windows, you can go to \\hostname to see what's shared, or specifically go to the incoming directory as created in this tutorial, \\hostname\incoming
in the Using a web browser part is that used though windows?
if so i cant seem to connect to my server
I am such a Noob...Followed your guide step for step, but I am unable to launch phpmyadmin or torrentflux. And the only way I got SWAT to work is using netkit-inetd. Any suggestions?
under the web launchpad it look like some of the text on the end got cut off what is the missing text?
nice easy guide...but a quick question -
any reason to give root a password, if you are continuing to use sudo for the rest of the process?
thanks....
w
Munjal, True. =) and I have used Torrent Flux in the past. Great stuff.
wesley - It's needed for SWAT.
One small pedantic comment...
Why do people use "sudo su"? I see people doing it where I work all the time and I've never understood it.
Don't people know of "sudo -s"?
I tried to setup Ubuntu on a Pentium III 500MHz and 256 meg Ram - it took 8 mins to boot, and the mouse cursor refreshes its position at about 1 frame per second. Is there a way to strip Ubuntu down to bare essentials or speed it up?
tsuke - use ubuntu server, not desktop
Isn't 10GB a little low for a file server?
Why not just get the linksys router with the usb port in it? I did that, upgraded the firmware, then plugged in a 500 gig drive. Took about 15 minutes.
Nobody mentioned getting a Linksys NSLU-2: with a USB disk, might work out slightly more expensive than the Dell, but lower power (4.5W), smaller, and completely silent. I use one of these to feed my XBox Media Centre, works like a charm.
Oh, don't forget to install Unslung on it first (http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Unslung/HomePage) so you have a fully-fledged Linux installation.
After I install PHPMyAdmin, I can't get to it.
nm, found what I did wrong.
as far as torrent clients are concerned, rtorrent is a nice, if not very intuitive (read the man page) alternative that can be run in screen to be controlled from anywhere with ssh access.
http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/
Fairly recent versions are available in Ubuntu's own repositories.
Cheers for the article!
Would be a great tutorial for the new tutorial site.
http://tutorialicio.us/
For those folks having problems getting swat to run:
In my case, the issue was that in step 14, the second line is shown as service swat {. The { should be on the next line by itself. Otherwise when you reconfigure xinetd it throws an error on the second line and swat service never starts. Fix this and you should be good to go with swat in a matter of moments.
On another note, the initial instruction to give the root user a password should be accomplished as sudo passwd root. This will ensure you assign a root password. The instruction as given didn't work in my case. You'll need the root password set properly in order to log into swat!
Great post, very handy! Thanks for sharing.
Riker
Great post! Thanks for sharing it.
Riker: You're a beaut! I spent a few hours trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with swat. Thanks for sharing that fix.
Riker - Thanks for the tweaks; I've updated accordingly.
I have just set up a server as directed. Everything works fine except that when I run SWAT I don't seem to get (or can't find) the option to create a share as suggested.
I am stuck at step 20, unable to access phpmyadmin in both firefox and ie. Any suggestions?
I'm with markjd and can't get past step 20.
After some googling I'm left wondering if apache was installed at all? Yes I chose the lamp installation option.
From various howtos it looks as if apache can be restarted like this:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
In my /etc/init.d/ no apache2 (or apache) can be found.
I'd love to know what I did wrong as everything was working so nicely up until this point.
Thanks in advance.
I'm with the people who mention that they can't access phpmyadmin on the server.
Oddly, I followed the instructions on this tutorial last Tuesday (12/5) and everything worked fine. I ended up screwing things up and starting over, and now phpmyadmin won't work the way it did the first time...
i'm sorry, this is my first linux experience. i do not know how to 'uncomment' something. apologies, but a little help?
Curtis: You probably don't want to make your first Linux experience a Server Edition. I'd say install Ubuntu Desktop and monkey around with that a bit before trying this tutorial. Spend some time with this PDF book to get used to Unix/Linux command-line operation.
But to answer your specific question, the "commented" lines in the text file are those that begin with the '#' character. These lines are ignored when the file is accessed by APT. If you add a pound sign before the CD-referencing line at the top and remove the symbol from the other "deb" references in the file, the APT package manager will use all available Internet repositiories while ignoring the local CD drive.
This is called "commenting out" because the '#' lines are usually used to add comments to programming code, so that people reading it later can be told what the various segments of a program actually do. This feature has also been used to toggle whether certain aspects of a program or configuration file are active or not by switching between "in use" and "commented out."
Aha! I figured out what the problem was with phpmyadmin not working. It's in the installation... when you have the option of choosing DNS/LAMP packages, it's not enough to merely move the cursor to the LAMP box and hit "Enter." You have to hit the space bar while the cursor is on LAMP, so that the option actually gets selected for installation.
Thanks, Brad. That fixed the problem :)
Oh, and thanks to JP of course :D
i and a total noob when it comes to this stuff but i got it mostly working except for the samba server
it is running but i can figure out how to make confg it properly and make it avail on "my network places"
samba is installed and and seems to work and i got swat installed and works but step 18 has me confused. i must be missing something .
can anyone elaborate on that step
thankyou
thanks a lot.i've been trying to break into linux for a few weeks or so. the problem is that every tutorial i've found makes assumptions about knowledge. this is the clearest one i've found so far. i've got the desktop edition, but i'm gonna try to sweat this out.
thanks so. sorry to be a nuisance, i've noticed that some linux guru's hate noob questions. i'll post back when i've figured it out.
richrmg: in step #18, you have to log in as "root." If you try with the normal user, there is no option to create a new share.
Also, after logging in to SWAT as root, I went to the Wizard button at the top and chose "enable home folders" and then hit "commit." This allows you to access the home folder via Samba, so you'll have another place to store files than just the torrentflux download directory.
Thank you Brad (and everyone else), I too, needed to hit that spacebar. I still can't believe I missed that.
I'm up and running and it's great.
Thanks Jon this was a great howto.
thanks bro, you walked a noob thru it! i got that tutorial too, great stuff. thanks a whole lot!
any idea what E: Couldn't find package torrentflux ' means? i make it to this step. thought maybe i'd chewed something up in the install so i did it again. i've updated, upgraded, etc. so i'm back begging for assistance.
After modifying the sources.list text file by changing the commenting status of the various lines, you need to run 'sudo apt-get update' so that your local copy of the package databases is synchronized with the list of software actually available on the servers.
'sudo apt-get upgrade' is a good idea, too: it makes sure everything you've got installed is up to the latest version. You should run this every so often to keep up with patches and bugfixes.
great! sorry to be so high maintenance. i've pointed a bunch of my friend who are interested in linux to this page... great tutorial.
Ok, I'm a complete noob; I admit this.
I thought I did everything right but I can't set up the samba share... There is an option to choose one but no option to create a share.
Did I do something wrong? Dumb question...
What did I do wrong and can it be fixed? Or do I need to start all over again? Better Questions...
Thanks! Tim
Doh! I'm a noob. Yeah, I was logged in as me, not as root.
Thanks for the great guide. If I can get this going so quickly, that's proof that it rocks!
Tim
JP, since you also said you use xbmc with your Linux server ... I'm going to ask a question about setting up xbmc to access my Linux server :)
I can successfully stream from my Windows based machines to xbmc, but I can't even connect to my new Linux server with xbmc :(
Here is part of the entry I tried using in my XboxMediaCenter.xml file for username markjd, password 2InSane?, ip address 192.168.1.100, smb name share:
smb://markjd;2InSane?@192.168.1.100/share/
Trying to connect to this share, xbmc prompts me for username and password each time, and does not accept when I type them in again :(
Any ideas?
TT2C:
I haven't used XBMC with this setup (I'm not a console-gaming sort of guy), but I may have a solution for you.
First of all, there should be a colon between the username and password, not a semicolon:
smb://WORKGROUP;USERNAME:PASSWORD@SERVER/SHARE
If there's a semicolon, it marks a division between a workgroup name and a username. (The share should auto-mount just fine even if you skip the workgroup altogether.)
Also, try an alphanumeric password (i.e. without the question mark). That may help, if reformatting the URL doesn't fix the issue.
TT2C - Don't use a semicolon. XBMC Manual - Bookmarks - smb://username:password@server.com/share/
Thanks, guys. I must have just been lucky with using semi colon in the past with my Windows based shares. Also changed to the password to remove the ?. Now works fine :D
I've a question about where to create a shared file-folder.
Do you create a folder "share" in root? Or would you create it in /home?
Under Windows, I would dedicate a partition with several folders (mp3, movies, pictures,...), but now with Linux I'm wondering what's the best way to organize my files and folders.
Do you create a folder (e.g."shared") in root, in /home?
What's your way of doing, and why?
all seemed to go smoothly (despite the fact that i'm largely clueless in this project), but now the same things that worked 30 minutes ago don't work. e.g. i could get into SWAT by
http://hostname:901/shares during the setup and do all the other things. the launchpad thing worked too. i don't think i changed anything, but now when i try
http://hostname:901/shares
i get an error saying
401 Authorization Required
You must be authenticated to use this service
i don't get any chance to supply authorization.
i can't get into phpMyAdmin or TorrentFlux either.
i'd appreciate any pointers.
thanks.
well its been a couple of weeks since my last post and while i like the concept. i cant get it to work and give up and going back to my windows xp azarus setup which i have on a different drive. problems i had
never able to get samba to work
(also tried to get ftp server on it and that didn't work either)
and the torrentflux the instructions installed where a older version 2.1beta and that had bugs and didn't & and may still not work well with multi gig files
I'm stuck at step 20 I reinstalled everyting right with LAMB version... i can restart apache2 but when I try to openen the phpmyadmin side my browser wants me to download a file istead of opening a webpage
Michael:
see this comment. I had the exact same problem, and that is what fixed it.
i am trying to get this working under my ubuntu-desktop version so i cannot exactly follow this tutorial.
so what i did was i use apt-get to install mysql5/php5/apache2
i have problem with logining into torrentflux.
when i type http://192.168.2.5/torrentflux/
in my browser
i get the following line
"Database error: Access denied for user 'torrentflux'@'localhost' to database 'torrentflux'
Always check your database variables in the config.php file."
i do not have the option of inputing my login username/password
Can someone tell me what am i doing wrong?
thanks a lot!!
blah~~
i restarted my ubuntu,
and now when i open
http://192.168.2.5/phpmyadmin
it askes me to open a .phtml file....
i thought this is the reason of my not starting mysql
but i have tried running "/etc/init.d/mysql start"
and this did not fix the problem:(
I have been using my Linux headless server for a few weeks now. Everything is going well, apart from when I run too many torrents at once.
When I am being especially greedy by running too many torrents at the same time, the python scripts used by bit tornado really chew up the memory and slow the system down :(
Although there was some trouble along the way, this article inspired me to set up a headless ubuntu server of my own, which is now hiding under a desk and serving packets on demand. Thank you, Mr. Peck!
First off thanks for the awesome guide. Thanks so much for putting the time into it.
After a couple installations, bit torrent and stuff works, but just not the shares. After setting it up however, I can see the share perfectly in Windows and Mac OSX, but when I select the share, it gives the following errors:
Windows:
"\\192.168.1.250\GeneralShare is not accessible. You might not have access to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have permission access.
The network path was not found."
Mac:
"The operation cannot be completed because one or more required items cannot be found. (Error code ~43)"
I'm not sure as to whether this is a permission problem, a port problem, or what?! I've checked many posts and it doesn't seem like any of their solutions have helped me.
Here is some other info
The folder:
drwxrwxrwx 5 root root 4096 2007-01-14 00:40 incoming
smb.conf file:
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
netbios name = fileserver
server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu)
obey pam restrictions = Yes
passdb backend = tdbsam
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .
syslog = 0
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 1000
dns proxy = No
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
invalid users = root
[General Share]
comment = General Share Directory
path = /incoming/share
valid users = immaage, aznfury684
admin users = immaage
read list = immaage, aznfury684
write list = immaage, aznfury684
browseable = yes
writable = yes
read only = No
Thank you Jon Peck for the writeup. As a newb i appreciate the help of setting up downloading box.
Because i'm a virgin to linux i too got stuck at step 20. Thank you Brad for pointing out the spacebar thing on the LAMP option. Maybe that should be noted in the guide *shifty eyes*
Anyway, and due to my un-linux skills, i couldn't figure out how to use the web interface on stop 18 in "Create the Samba share"....couldn't find any configure buttons/options.
So in case others are like me, here is the guide i used for step 18
http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Share_files_using_Samba
Hi, at step 18, when connecting to swat (//...:901/shares), I was prompted to enter a user/passwd there. When using my ubuntu user, I can't create or modify any shares, but with root it worked, I didn't try with the samba user.
I found it easier to add a share by modifying (with sudo) the /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the following:
[share]
comment = shared folder
path = /share/
public = yes
writable = yes
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
force user = nobody
force group = nogroup
and restart the samba server
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
Dan
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