old PC TO NAS

Joeface

So have a Dimension 2400 in all its power and glory sitting under my desk here @ work , I have three drives for it 40gb for boot , 360gb+400GB

I had been using it as an FTP , windows XP and so on. and it was fine , Remote on with Teamview every now and again if something needed doing.but its past its use and well Not very secure and it was on its way to the scrap heap

I was going to try and get a NAS that can take IDE drives , but do not want to spend money on a dinosaur

So am Think Linux OS but which one ??
What can I use for remote desktop from windows to Linux ??
figure I can learn something New doing this
Celeron 2.8Ghz
786mb Ram ( yep not even a gig of SDRAM could be found in the building)

ED E

IDE Drives = past working lifespan most likely.

TDP = 100W+

768MB: Not enough for FreeNas or Nas4Free even

Bin it. Buy a WD 2TB Mybook with a NIC. Save a €€ on esb usage (even if its the companys power not yours).

Your idea is nice, but its only really suited to LGA775 boards and up.

PropJoe10

Lubuntu would run on that (Ubuntu with LXDE desktop) but not very well. Unless you can get your hands on more RAM, that machine isnt going to be of much use I'm afraid.

Joeface

ah all the fun taken out it ..........It seems a waste of 760GB of hard drives .
Thanks for the replies , If i stumble on to something better disappearing under my desk I will proceed further

jimgoose

Personally I'd stick OpenSolaris on it with a basic ZFS setup, use VNC for desktopping and shove it under the stairs.

dr.fuzzenstein

For NAS I can recommend a Raspberry Pi, mine runs of a 700 mA phone charger.
I have a 2TB USB drive connected to it (will need separate power supply) and it provides NAS, DLNA server for the telly and downloads torrents.
If I do need the desktop, I use VNC server, which you can connect to from linux via command line or Windows via client. It doesn't even have to have a GUI, you could run it headless and do everything via command line, it's not as bad as it sounds. :P
It could do a million more things, the sky's the limit.
If you do want to keep the existing box, you could consider a smaller Linux incarnation:
http://www.howtogeek.com/172987/revive-your-old-pc-the-3-best-linux-systems-for-old-computers/

The remote desktop should™ work for that as well as the Pi.

PrzemoF

Installing linux is so easy and quick (and free!) that you'd give it a shot anyway. I'm using a raspberry pi as NAS (among other things), so your PC looks like a powerhouse :-)

jimgoose

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

For NAS I can recommend a Raspberry Pi....

Ah, the MITS Altair 8800 of a new generation! :pac:

dr.fuzzenstein

jimgoose wrote: »

Ah, the MITS Altair 8800 of a new generation! :pac:

There's nothing the Pi can't do! (albeit very slowly...)
Have you seen the new Pi? Quad Core and a gig of RAM:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/

Joeface

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

For NAS I can recommend a Raspberry Pi, mine runs of a 700 mA phone charger.
I have a 2TB USB drive connected to it (will need separate power supply) and it provides NAS, DLNA server for the telly and downloads torrents.
If I do need the desktop, I use VNC server, which you can connect to from linux via command line or Windows via client. It doesn't even have to have a GUI, you could run it headless and do everything via command line, it's not as bad as it sounds. :P
It could do a million more things, the sky's the limit.
If you do want to keep the existing box, you could consider a smaller Linux incarnation:
http://www.howtogeek.com/172987/revive-your-old-pc-the-3-best-linux-systems-for-old-computers/

The remote desktop should™ work for that as well as the Pi.

Cheers replies , I have found a 2.8Ghz P4 and some Ram I think so It will be over 1GB , In my scavenger hunt I also found a few USB camera's as well, So my mind is exploding with Idea's More than like this i will go under the Stairs or into the Attic . I will Try out some of those Linux versions once I get the box home , RSS feeds and some downloads . I have 2TB MYBOOK ready so this thing is really just for messing with

dr.fuzzenstein

Now that's what computers should be all about!

cuculainn

ED E wrote: »

IDE Drives = past working lifespan most likely.

TDP = 100W+

768MB: Not enough for FreeNas or Nas4Free even

Bin it. Buy a WD 2TB Mybook with a NIC. Save a €€ on esb usage (even if its the companys power not yours).

Your idea is nice, but its only really suited to LGA775 boards and up.

Hey I have an old compaq pentium III running NAS4Free.
Definitely less than a gig of ram...
couple of two Tb harddrives,

Runs like a dream......

I know it probably guzzles power but I went to such an effort to set it up I can t bring myself to retire it!!!

Joeface

ok so parts pile

Dimension 2400
1x 40 + 1x360 + 1x400 GB drives
1Gb Ram
54Mbps Wireless Dongle(Belkin, think I have driver set)
2 x USB camera's
25m USB cable

I shall see how usable it turns out

dr.fuzzenstein

You could also turn it into an AD server for the home.

KAGY

Joeface wrote: »

ok so parts ....
2 x USB camera's
25m USB cable

I shall see how usable it turns out

You could check out zone minder - it's a CCTV suite for Linux. Don't know what the minimum specs are now though

Joeface

KAGY wrote: »

You could check out zone minder - it's a CCTV suite for Linux. Don't know what the minimum specs are now though

found that last night when I was using my amazing googling powers. it should run fine. Should have something up and running by the weekend.

Joeface

Picking between these 2 versions of Linux... Leaning slightly towards Lite over LUBUNTU

Linux Lite Recommended Hardware/Minimal System requirements
Recommended Hardware/Minimal System requirements:
700 MHz processor+ (your CPU must support pae for 32bit, or for 64bit you need a 64bit capable processor)
512 MiB RAM+
5 GB of hard-drive space+
VGA capable of 1024x768 screen resolution
(System boots to about 120-160mb ram after a fresh install)

Lubuntu .
Memory (RAM): For advanced internet services like Google+, Youtube, Google Docs and Facebook, your computer needs at least 1 GB RAM. For local programs like Libre Office and simple browsing habits, your computer needs at least 512 MB RAM.
Processor (CPU): The minimum specification for CPU is Pentium 4 or Pentium M or AMD K8. nd AMD K7 has problems with flash video.
Graphics chip / card: Nvidia, AMD/ATI/Radeon and Intel work out of the box,

PropJoe10

Joeface wrote: »

Picking between these 2 versions of Linux... Leaning slightly towards Lite over LUBUNTU

Linux Lite Recommended Hardware/Minimal System requirements
Recommended Hardware/Minimal System requirements:
700 MHz processor+ (your CPU must support pae for 32bit, or for 64bit you need a 64bit capable processor)
512 MiB RAM+
5 GB of hard-drive space+
VGA capable of 1024x768 screen resolution
(System boots to about 120-160mb ram after a fresh install)

Lubuntu .
Memory (RAM): For advanced internet services like Google+, Youtube, Google Docs and Facebook, your computer needs at least 1 GB RAM. For local programs like Libre Office and simple browsing habits, your computer needs at least 512 MB RAM.
Processor (CPU): The minimum specification for CPU is Pentium 4 or Pentium M or AMD K8. nd AMD K7 has problems with flash video.
Graphics chip / card: Nvidia, AMD/ATI/Radeon and Intel work out of the box,

Had actually never heard of Linux Lite, nice find. Must load it up in a VM and see what its like!

Joeface

its installed now anyway , USB over lunch time , I like how it applied all the updates. seems fluid enough

So next is getting , Wifi Dongle working then RDP working as Teamviewer would /will be a bit heavy , Then USB Cameras followed by ZoneMinder

excollier

I use a Raspberry Pi, headless, with TightVNC Server and Remmina as the client on the main Linux computer for any gui work. It works as a NAS with Samba for any Windows clients (rarely) and a 320GB hdd in a dock attached by usb. I also use it as a torrent box and soon it will be the printer server too.
This setup would work easily on the op's computer, minus the usb attached hd, running Debian Wheezy 32 bit on 512 of ram.

Joeface

Cheers Excollier , Might look into that,.

Everything pretty much sorted now just tweaking zoneminder and its more the USB camera's than zone minder. they are stuck in a really low resolution. I was not expecting much but they are fairly awful.

also found a PCI video card 128mb NVidia .So I will see if I can sort drivers for that.

I'm impressed so far. I remember a few years ago trying out UBUNTU and having trouble with drivers for certain parts.
and been a windows user I had no Patience for it. But Linux Lite has worked with every part I have added so far.
It does run much smoother than Windows XP had run on the system.So far it has been worth while as I now have another old system that can rebuild , I just need a power supply for it .

dr.fuzzenstein

Wish I was that fast, configuring Linux is always days of swearing at obscure problems that only I seem to be having in the whole world! :P
Every time I follow a configuration guide where thousands of people have posted "great, thanks" and "worked first time", I get an error. Usually three days later I stumble upon the single post on the entire internet that says "You will also have to edit X,Y and Z to make this work properly", it's a conspiracy I tells ya!
Linux didn't come easy to me, I think I have a permanent brick wall imprint on my forehead.

Joeface

Believe me it doesn't come easy to me either. Windows is too easy to work with .

i find some of the linux forums a bit elitist , but then again I am coming to it with zero knowledge and frustration is probably adding too that feeling . I was finding it hard to find step by step for some of the info before . This time Round has been a bit easier . I am not expecting this system to run like the i3 or anything .
Just a bit of a learning tool.

dr.fuzzenstein

You're going about it the right way.
With me it was several defunct, old laptops and the Pi, setting up Samba, DLNA (that was the one that omitted the step of giving the miniDLNA client enough rights, which is configured via a separate file that ISN'T mentioned in the setup process :mad:), VNC, Apache (haven't gotten past It Works! yet) and general fooling around with it. Oh yes, one does go a lot deeper than with a shiny new laptop with Windows 8.1 that works straight out the box.
Eventually comes the point where the pain turns to gain and your smart TV finally starts seeing all those (completely legal, ahem) movies on your USB drive attached to the Pi.
One thing about miniDLNA, if it comes across a filename it doesn't like, it will stop hashing there and then. I had to turn around the order, as it hashed music first, then movies and one song somewhere has a $ in the title.
Took me three days to find out why it would seemingly see all the movies, all the pictures and all the music, but not together.