Want a media server, whats good?

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krazyjosh5

krazyjosh5

theres GOLD in dem tubes!
May 28, 2007
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My main computer is a laptop. All my MP3s are stored on an external harddrive. My desk is typically set up with an external monitor, keyboard, speakers, and hard drive. Its a pain in the ass because when I want to use the portability feature of the laptop, I have to go without the music since its on an external hard drive.

THUS, I want to buy a simple computer to jack into the wifi router and host my external hard drive to me. That way, when I disconnect my laptop from my 'desk' (ie my external EVERYTHING), Ill still be able to get into my music.

NOW, I am a noob and havent hit it off and am not making six figures yet, yadda yadda. SO $100 or so is the limit on this one.

Im a computer engineer so putting shit together is not a problem but also plenty of fun. Dont hesitate to recommend buying lots of shit to build. Dont hesitate to tell me to buy a shitty old Dell computer, also.

Upgradability is nice if I choose to want to serve more shit from it in the future (ie documents, router, spam filter, whatnot). If at all possible, Id like it to not be so crippled that it might be able to also do other light serving tasks like maybe act as a local web development test bed (for simple shit like a web interface to a simple SQL db).

So whats good, wickedfire?

EDIT - Everything will be used mainly for local network file sharing. Having the capability to serve shit over the web is a plus.
 


Get any old box with at least a celeron 800 and 256 to 512 mb of ram and install Ubuntu on it. It's easy peasy to put Apache/MySql/Php on it and have it be a full scale server if that's what you desire. You don't need anything any more fancy to get the job done.
 
My wife uses an old Celeron 700 with 192mb of ram. She uses it to surf the net and whatever in Ubuntu Linux. It can serve up files, even stream MP3's if that's your thing. Plenty of steam for Apache2/MySql/PHP. I posted Celeron 800 because that would give you just a little more power for any future plans, but I doubt you'd need it.

Never underestimate the power of Linux to get the job done. For example, I carry Xming on a flash drive. No matter where I am in the campus, I can walk up to any Windows machine and access my laptop on my desk as if I was right at my desk.
 
If it's going to be a web server, there's no point in ubuntu. Use debian - ubuntu's basically the hot-secks GUI version of that. Debian is clearly better for servers.

This is a good idea though. Maybe I'll buy a $100 computer for school next year and do just this between laptop and desktop. I could even keep it at my house. Hmm.

edit: shit, what an unceremonious 500th post
 
chatmasta said:
shit, what an unceremonious 500th post
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HOORAY, HAPPY 500th POST!!
woo!
:rasta: :rasta: :small-smiley-026: :rainfro: :thumbsup: :cool2: :drinkup:

would you like to thank anyone chatmasta? god, your mom, the little ones?
 
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