win 2000 pro or xp pro??

[iroc409]

well, i've decided i think i'm going to throw together a makeshift fileserver in light of my recent issues and concerns.

i've got this asus cusl2-c sitting here brand new that's been collecting dust. figure i should put it to use. it was going to be my web server/dev box, but my current web server is definitely fast enough to do what i need it to do, and then some, so i don't really need anything different right now.

so anyways, i figure i'd toss in like a celeron 900 or something, 196mb ram, and probably like one of the drives out of my web server. 6-8gb drives, for the main drive. then i've got a couple extra ata cards, and i'd toss in my 100gb and 120gb and use the machine for lan storage for now (until i decide what i ultimately am going to do).

so, what should i use? my desktop is win xp, and i remember there are some networking issues i believe between the two OSes. but, i figure, since this is a slower computer, maybe win 2000 would be a better choice for perfomance concerns. all the hardware should run fine in 2000, i think.

i'm just concerned the networking will be a bitch. i basically want to share the hard drives on the network so i can map them and basically work from them, but have them not in my system. they also have to be password protected and stuff tho, my neighbor is sharing my network connection.

all the machine will do is file serving, and run the basics like firewall and antivirus software (probably be pretty strict about this stuff too... a lot more so than on my system... since this is all the machine will do).

so anyways... i'm off to cannibalize my web server and order a processor.

unless anyone has a coppermine intel chip that's reasonably fast they want to sell cheap??


edit: i think i have a copy of advanced server 2000 as well around here somewhere, that might be an option as well. but i really don't see a need for that, for a file server...

[pHaestus]

Sharing and permissions and group policies are pretty similar in Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro. I use XP at the house now out of convenience (I'd have to go find my 2000 pro cd) rather than any real need. I do like cleartype fonts but that's hardly an issue on a fileserver. On the minus, XP Pro is quite a bit more bloated by default than is 2k. On the plus side, XP Pro includes the remote desktop app so you can log onto the server from your other boxes to configure it.

I would guess that XP would require a bit more tweaking and trimming of software to get to run well on your system. Whatever you do, avoid XP Home as it is missing a lot of networking features that you may want to use.

[iroc409]

Originally posted by pHaestus
Sharing and permissions and group policies are pretty similar in Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro. I use XP at the house now out of convenience (I'd have to go find my 2000 pro cd) rather than any real need. I do like cleartype fonts but that's hardly an issue on a fileserver. On the minus, XP Pro is quite a bit more bloated by default than is 2k. On the plus side, XP Pro includes the remote desktop app so you can log onto the server from your other boxes to configure it.

I would guess that XP would require a bit more tweaking and trimming of software to get to run well on your system. Whatever you do, avoid XP Home as it is missing a lot of networking features that you may want to use.

i'm thinking of maybe just sticking with 2000 for now on this machine, since it's going to be a fairly slow box.

but, then again, all it has to do is store my files and act like a network drive, so a fast box really shouldn't be all that necessary. like i said, i will probably run a lot of AV and firewall software, just because the machine is dedicated for this, and i shouldn't notice a performance loss.

xp home isn't even a consideration. i've played with it a little, and it reminded me a lot of ME.

i'm just thinking, i'm not even sure if i can run a 1gig celeron on this board. it says celerons of 66mhz fsb, although the board supports the 100/133fsb of the p3. so, it might support the 1gig celeron, assuming it will adapt itself to the 100mhz fsb.

i guess the only reason i _wouldn't_ run 2000 is 2 points... the networking issues between xp pro and 2000 pro (if there are any), and system stability/security. i know the 2000 pro sp1 had a bad tendency of hosing file systems, and was highly NOT recommended. i just downloaded the network install of sp4 off m$'s site, so hopefully by round 4 that's no longer an issue. hopefully with some of the other bugs as well.

logging on from elsewhere isn't a big deal.. the system will be right here. it's not going to be available to the outside world either. i don't need that security risk.

i dunno. it's almost like it's not really worth it, as well tho. i mean, i can put together a 2.4-2.6 celeron box for like 150-175$. but then again, i can build this for like $40, and it should do what i want for now. so, it's probably not worth the extra cash, and it puts some spare parts to use i guess. then down the road i can build some crazy-ass raid 5 1terabyte lan server and go silly nuts

[msv]

Paranoid question:
You mention You will use the machine as a firewall. Does 2kpro and xppro support multiple NICs or is that restricted to the Server-versions of the OS? (yes, You can have different drivers installed, but does the OS *really* keep track on the different NICs, or does it just send the packets randomly to the NIC that seems least busy for the moment?) I´ve heard different statements on that point.
regards
Mikael S.

[leejsmith]

both will support multiple nics but i think win2k server or xp pro is needed for internet connection sharing on 2k server Using routing and remote access you can setup port rules ,fire walls and NAT.
Also you can setup ip filters on each nic.

I think xp pro has internet connection sharing too.

if you have it use win2k server or advanced for a file server.

using 2k server will also give you terminal server , IIS, file and logon auditing plus advanced security options.

[airspirit]

For something like that I wouldn't install Windows. Install a thin and light version of linux with a lightweight window manager (such as Gentoo with XFCE4) and use Samba to run your fileserver. Your winblows boxes won't notice the difference over the network, and with the lower overhead of Linux over winblows (192MB of SDRAM would be a bear on WinXP and nominally tolerable in Win2000) you will get better performance. While you're at it, you could also dump your webserver on the box under Apache2.

Windows XP was never meant for use as a fileserver platform ... it was meant as a candy coated GUI for Windows 2000 with a bit more driver support. Windows 2000/XP is a client side OS, not server side. Linux, OTOH, is designed to be what you make of it.

With the Gentoo side, you could get away with just bootstrapping, emerging the basic system, customizing your kernel for Samba and filesharing, and then dropping XFCE4 and Samba on the box. Nothing more would need to be done practically, and it would run extremely fast. My 700 Mhz Athlon at home runs as fast under XFCE4 as my overclocked Barton box under WinXP Pro. Food for thought.

Word of warning: installing Gentoo is not for the faint of heart. I've been learning that lesson very well this past week.

[iroc409]

i think i have a copy of advanced server 2000 laying around here, not sure where i put it tho .


i'm not going to be actually using this machine as a firewall, i probably mislead a bit there. i just meant i was going to use good firewall software to protect the machine. it's not going to bridge connections or anything. i also plan on using several antivirus/spyware programs on the machine, to prevent theft or corruption of the data.

however, from what i remember of the pre-launch assemblies and stuff i went to on 2000 pro, yes, it can do the multiple network thing.


edit: forgot to add, xp pro also does the dual nic thing pretty nicely. in fact, it's pretty sweet with the whole wireless thing as well. had a deal for a while that a friend of mine was working at my place for a while, and had wireless on his laptop and a desktop. at the time i didn't have wireless, so we hooked up the desktop to the hub, and using it's wireless nic, made a gateway for the laptop. you can go into the network settings, and if you have 2 networks running, right click or something and click "bridge connections". works really slick.

[iroc409]

Originally posted by airspirit
For something like that I wouldn't install Windows. Install a thin and light version of linux with a lightweight window manager (such as Gentoo with XFCE4) and use Samba to run your fileserver. Your winblows boxes won't notice the difference over the network, and with the lower overhead of Linux over winblows (192MB of SDRAM would be a bear on WinXP and nominally tolerable in Win2000) you will get better performance. While you're at it, you could also dump your webserver on the box under Apache2.

Windows XP was never meant for use as a fileserver platform ... it was meant as a candy coated GUI for Windows 2000 with a bit more driver support. Windows 2000/XP is a client side OS, not server side. Linux, OTOH, is designed to be what you make of it.

With the Gentoo side, you could get away with just bootstrapping, emerging the basic system, customizing your kernel for Samba and filesharing, and then dropping XFCE4 and Samba on the box. Nothing more would need to be done practically, and it would run extremely fast. My 700 Mhz Athlon at home runs as fast under XFCE4 as my overclocked Barton box under WinXP Pro. Food for thought.

Word of warning: installing Gentoo is not for the faint of heart. I've been learning that lesson very well this past week.

there's a couple issues with your idea. i think it's a fine idea, and i'd love having a *nix fileserver (but admittedly, i'd probably use FreeBSD... loyalty). however, there are 2 issues.

the drives that will be used for storage are already formatted in ntfs. i can't lose the data, so basically i can't format them to ufs. and, since i know FreeBSD can read ntfs, but it doesn't really write to it, that's not really a good idea to throw these drives in there.

secondly, i've never gotten samba to run successfully, although i've only tried really hard once on a redhat 7.1 box

the web server isn't a big issue.. i kinda like my little k62 box, with its underclock and it's 10-year-old 2mb pci diamond stealth video card

[Yo-DUH_87]

Originally posted by iroc409
...and it's 10-year-old 2mb pci diamond stealth video card

Hey, I have the ISA version of that card

I personaly use a *nix box as my fileserver, and it works prety nicely. However, if you want to use Windows, use 2000. XP is not a very good os as far as networking goes (as far as I'm concerned).

If you have files on the drives that you don't want to lose, why not plug them into another computer, copy the files, and then build a *nix box.

[BrianW]

I am sure someone here would send you a spare drive to use to copy the files over. I would but just gave away my only 10gb hd I had left.

BrianW

[Zhentar]

correct me if I'm wrong but samba performs considerably better than windows for file sharing...

And theres a project on sourceforge for NTFS in Linux, but I don't know how far along it is.

[airspirit]

You could clear one partition at a time, convert to ReiserFS, and then transfer data, clearing the newly empty one and repeating until done. All you would need is one partition free. It would be a lengthy process, but in the end it would be beneficial, since fragmentation is the bane of fileservers and Ext3/ReiserFS doesn't suffer that fate.

[iroc409]

hrm, well, if i do some housecleaning and delete my music video stuff (which i don't use anyway, haven't watched one in months), i should be able to fit everything on the 100gb. then, i could use the 120gb in a *nix server. the only thing is support for the UDMA card, but i'd guess it's probably built into the os.

the next step is figuring out how to get samba running. that definitely would be a much nicer solution, and generally hardware lasts a lot longer with *nix stuff. it would also make the server a lot faster.

so, how hard is it to get samba running? ugh.

i think i've dug up an extra memory chip, so i should be able to put 384mb in the system.

[BrianW]

Samba is real simple to use. There are different modes the server can operate in. I generally use "user". If you read the man page for samba it is pretty easy to set it up. Also the default conf file has many preset (commented out) configs to mess with.

BrianW

[airspirit]

Samba is a piece 'o cake. Don't worry about that.

[iroc409]

well, i've read through the unofficial samba doc site (from samba.org), and most of the 1st and part of the second chapter from the oreilly book on samba on the samba site, and it doesn't appear it should be that difficult.

it's probably changed a bit as well from the 2-3 years ago i last played with it, on a redhat box. that's probably part of the source of my distaste of redhat, becuase the whole thing was messed up.

anyways, it looks pretty simple, so i think imma give that a go.

i figure i'm going to do it like this. i'm going to copy over all the important stuff to my 100gb drive on my win box, i figure without the music videos i have roughly 60gb of data laying around. if i feel too attached to them, i can always drop them on the c drive for now. then the 120 will go in the server, and i'll use the 100gb as a detached storage unit for all the big stuff. basically just make a good image every month or so, and keep it nice and tidy packed up in a box for insurance. i'm thinking about maybe getting one of those external usb hard drive boxes maybe to store it in as well.

that should do pretty well, and this server should be pretty fast. i'm going to run FreeBSD 4.8-stable on it, methinks. not really a need i don't think to go to 5.1, i don't need opteron support or anything like that.