I Suck At Building A File Server

one of the problems of being a geek is being prone to do geeky things.

so with the long 4th of july weekend, i decided to partake in geekdom by building a file server. too bad i suck at building a file server.

now, my journey down the path of geekdom this weekend did not exactly start out of the blue. my bff (kerry) recently purchased a new laptop because her existing laptop was somewhat dated and slow. i had originally suggested to kerry that she keep the existing laptop to network both computers.

kerry did not exactly want to networking the two computers, in part because the existing computer was quite slow and did not maintain any sort of battery charge (thus, requiring the use of the ac adapter).

anyway, i then started to brainstorm other things kerry could do with her existing laptop. the things that came to my mind, other than use the laptop as a big paperweight, were a nas (network attached storage) or a file server. needless to say, the two ideas peaked my curiosity and i wondered if it would even be possible to create either device with little overhead.

soon afterwards, kerry offered me her old existing laptop (and her roommate's old laptop) for my experimental purposes. i declined her offer because i knew karen would kill me if i brought home any more computers. i have a slight tendency to bring computers home because i am attracted to shiny objects... and objects that occasionally beep and flash. the only problem, of course, is with all the home improvement projects and whatnot that i have been working on... i very rarely have any time to do things with these computers. so what ends up happening is that the computers basically take up space and collect dust in the house.

luckily, kerry could recycle her old computer (and her roommate's computer) through the company that she purchased her new laptop from (dell). although i'm probably not as extreme as my friend (joanna), i am a big fan of recycling. i think it's great that dell will recycle your old computers. yay dell!

needless to say, the thought of putting an old computer to use stuck in my mind. so this weekend, i decided to turn one of my old computers into a file server. according to my friend, wikipedia:

"a file server is a computer attached to a network that has the primary purpose of providing a location for the shared storage of computer files (such as documents, sound files, photographs, movies, images, databases, et cetera) that can be accessed by the workstations that are attached to the computer network. The term server highlights the role of the machine in the client-server scheme, where the clients are the workstations using the storage. A file server is usually not performing any calculations, and does not run any programs on behalf of the clients. It is designed primarily to enable the rapid storage and retrieval of data where the heavy computation is provided by the workstations."

the old computer i decided to turn into a file server came compliments of the ceo from my previous job. the ceo had a media center pc that received the "blue screen of death", which is an error screen most notably seen on a microsoft windows computer. as the ceo couldn't be bothered by these error screens, he gave the computer to me.

because i have never been a big fan of microsoft, i reformatted the computer to use a more stable operating system: linux. linux has a whole slew of advantages over windows: it's free; it's open source; it's practically virus free as no one writes viruses for linux (because microsoft has the market share); plus, did i mention it's free? i could probably go on and on.

now, i've never used linux, so creating a linux file server to interact with microsoft windows computers in a network provided a good learning experience. it took some time trying to figure things out. in the end, i was able to successfully create the linux file server. immediately afterwards, i began moving all of my files from my primary computer onto the linux file server so that all of the computers on my network could use them.

i am so excited. and yes, i am such a geek. i even think karen is somewhat happy because i finally did something with one of those old computers.