[Techtalk] Home server - Where to start?

[Michael Carson]

Svenja,

I have very similar hardware hooked up to my TV, running Ubuntu, so I think
it's a pretty good idea. :)  My original plan was to just use it as a file
server, backup server, and to do anything I needed cron for.  The
multi-media bit was a bit of mission creep when my wife wanted to be able to
see video podcasts on the TV.

In order to do things with X, I've installed the basic X things
(gnome-desktop &c) and x11vnc (http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/).  I've also
got a keyboard/mouse combo that looks like a Blackberry, except instead of
an LCD it has a touchpad.  It connects over RF to its USB dongle, which then
looks like standard human interface devices to Linux.  I leave X up all the
time, and most of its operation is viewed on the TV and uses the
mini-keyboard.  When I want a real keyboard & GUI, I ssh into the box and
start x11vnc.  Then I can connect via any VNC client, do what I want, and
the VNC display is mirrored on the TV.

For a mail server, you might want to look into
http://www.iredmail.org/index.html.  It looks like it's trivial to set up,
though I've never used it.

C.

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 6:49 AM, <techtalk-request at linuxchix.org> wrote:

> From: "Svenja S." <chaosprincess90 at gmx.net>
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 17:15:01 +0200
> Subject: [Techtalk] Home server - Where to start?
> Hi everyone,
>
> First, I'm not sure whether is this the right place to ask this, or if
> it is more of a beginner question.
> Anyway, we've just bought an EEEbox that we're planning to use as a home
> server and for multimedia (and to play around a bit...). Not sure
> whether that is such a great idea, but I didn't pay for the thing...
> I've been using Arch Linux for a while, so this is what I'd like to
> install on the machine. But I don't have any experience in running a
> server, so do you have any suggestions how I could get an idea of what
> could be done with this thing and how?
> First, we would like to run a file server, plus I've always wanted my
> own mail server, but that will have to wait until I really know what I'm
> doing ;)
> It would also be nice to have some way to remotely start X in order to
> watch a movie... Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> Svenja
>
>