A logical choice for this to me seemed to be to go with what I was used to, Ubuntu box with all the additional software which I needed installed via apt-get, this is something which I’ve got experience in doing and I know it works effectively. But, since there are now Mac’s involved I also thought Time Machine integration would be a nice touch, after a bit of googling around I found this tutorial. It all seemed simple enough to understand so I decided to go for it and hope for the best.

A couple of hours later I’d got it all setup, along with a DHCP server running on the Ubuntu box which makes everything run just a tad more smoothly, so, time for the first backup. Initially I couldn’t get past the “Preparing Backup” stage, it seemed that I have got too much crap on my laptop, so I thought I’d kick-start the process by excluding the “Users” folder, bringing the backup size to a more manageable 27 GB. This all worked fine after a lot of fiddling, but basically the connection kept getting interrupted for some reason, and it took forever to do the initial backup, at this point I removed the exclusion folder for the Users fold and left Time Machine to do its stuff. Though not for long, I kept getting network problems, so came to the conclusion that this simply wasn’t working.

Time to rethink?

By then I was getting somewhat annoyed, what seemed like a simple process simply wasn’t working, and why could the backup’s simply be created on any file sharing protocol which OS X supports? After all the data is stored within a “.sparsebundle” file, therefore there won’t be loss of meta data regardless of these variables (I am pretty sure about this, not 100% though).

I came to the conclusion that the best solution would be to add something there which natively supported the AFP protocol, since a new Apple computer was out of the question it seemed the next best thing would be a logical choice, I knew that the machine I had to install “Leopard” on had driver support which left much to be desired, although my conclusion was that so long as I could get the ethernet port running I was good to go. Installed this without a glitch, ticked all the right boxes and within an hour a “brand new” mac. Setting up the Time Machine drive so that It was shared over AFP was no problem, and my MacBook picked it up straight away, then after selecting through Time Machine prefpane I set it going and got a backup done over a speedy gigabit connection, so far so good, but then I started getting the same problems – every so often the connection would appear to just cut off, not allowing me to login over AFP or, well, do anything really. Since this has happened twice on the same computer I am beginning to think that maybe the problem is related to the physical port, as otherwise I’m out of ideas.

And now …

That is where I’m stuck for options; I can either use Time Machine with a standard external drive, and simple connect it up to different computers, continue trying to get to the root cause of the problem with my Server, or spend money on new hardware (Time Capsule/Mac Mini).

Now I’m installing Ubuntu desktop on my other computer, I chose to go 64 bit. As I said before there’s something about ubuntu which makes me want to use it, and since it will be on a dedicated machine, with (fingers crossed) wobbly windows, and a proper connection to a monitor, through my new KVM switch, I’m hoping that it will be a very pleasant experience.

This brings me onto the KVM, a Belkin model, available from ebuyer for around £19. It is absolutely brilliant, switching between computers is almost instant with the button on top (haven’t bothered with the windows software) and the only fault about it is the really long cables, although better being too long than too short. So if anyone’s wanting an easy way to control 2 computers. Buy it! Absolutely worth it.

What is currently my server will become my ubuntu box, to be honest it’s far too over-specced to do what it’s doing currently (basically a development system for me). It will be replaced with an oldish AMD Athlon box with I’ve recently acquired, with the following specs:

• AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 Ghz)
• 256 Mb DDR Ram
• An old 8 gb hard drive for OS (same as current)
• 250 gb hard drive for storage, on a new SATA controller card.
• Old dedicated nVidia graphics

So that should be just enough to run ubuntu server quite nicely, then I’ll be using Ubuntu desktop (not sure weather to go 64-bit or not) on what is currently my server, with these specs:

• AMD Athlon 64 3500+
• 1.25 Gb DDR Ram
• 80 gb IDE hard drive
• 256 mb nVidia Geforce 6000 something graphics (hoping for wobbly windows)

I’ve also ordered a Belkin KVM switch, which will arrive tomorrow, so that’ll make the experience much nicer than using just VNC. Maybe this will be one final thing to convert me over, as pretty much all that I’m using my computer for nowadays is word processing, and web dev, so not really much “windows” is required. Although, I need VB for college, and don’t fancy learning something totally new on linux, that I probably won’t be able to work on there. So loosing windows seems to be a no-go for now.

Yay

I’ve just booted it up today, since I have a day of school because of the snow to find a message:

The X server(graphical interface) could not be started, would you like to diagnose this problem? So I chose yes, but nothing.

Not a good start!

Luckily I’m able to login, and that starts up samba so I can backup everything I want.

Not exactly a great start to the day, as it looks like I’m going to have to spend an hour or so re-installing ubuntu.

Bloody Brilliant

But at least it’s snowing, so I get the day off And I’m hoping it will continue until tomorrow!

I posted before about getting ubuntu working, But now I’ve got a new hard drive for it, and alls going well. It serves files to all computers on the network, a hell of a lot quicker than my PC connected over wireless, runs MySQL with no problems, and just works excellently!

Although for something just to server up files I think it’s a bit over-specced, although this is the only hardware I have not in use:

• AMD Athlon 64 3500+
• 1.25 Gb of Ram
• GigaByte Motherboard (not sure which, but it’s pretty good)
• nVidia GeForce 256mb 6-something PCI-e graphics card (being wasted in this computer, monitor is off all the time, and when I do use it it’s through VNC)
• 1x 8 GB hard drive, for OS and software
• 250Gb SATAII Drive for files

Initially I had a bit of trouble getting it to mount, but then I found the “Enable” button in System>Administration>Disks. The I just needed to configure apache to serve files fomr the drive, and setup samba to do the same. All was working well in under an hour. And it’s had no random hiccups so far.

Admittedly this probably isn’t the most energy-efficient device in the world, but it’s convenient and not on 24/7.

In fact, the only annoyance so far was my dad waking me up this morning at about 6:30am (my eyes were too blurry to see the time) to ask me how to switch it off, at least he didn’t think i’d destroyed the world because it wasn’t windows. He managed to turn it off by using the unstructions “Click the thing that looks like a door, then shut down”. And I was then able to go back to sleep. Yay

Today I went back to fiddling trying to get a Ubuntu set up as a file/web server. Last time I tried I failed with both samba and apache, I managed to compile apache from source, but couldn’t get it to work. So after a small amount of googling I found possibly the best help websites, http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper. It has everything stored on one place where it is easy to find, I started off with samba. No problem, then apache & php, yet again, no problem, I didn’t even have to open httpd.conf. Now I have a fully functioning LAMP + S (Samba) server.

I’m quite proud of myself for just under an hours worth of work, as now everything is setup and I know what I’m doing when my new hard drive comes on wednesday.

Update: I’ve tried to install apache, download the source code, compiled it, and it installed, but wouldn’t start, then I realised you could get it through apt-get, but that’s for another day.