BlackFade.comRob Taylor – Web Developer, UK

I should explain that at home, I’ve got a central server which was a gaming pc 4 years ago.  It’s served me really well over the years for both of it’s jobs.  But we’ve reached a point where it needs an overhaul, inside and out.  It’s currently a 7tb media server, which over the years has been experimented on for various tasks.

So the First Stage of all this is to clean up the current server, physically. I don’t move the server much, but the last time I opened it, it was a good inch thick in dust at some places, and I am not exaggerating. So my housemate, Dom, and I will be opening it up and taking the vacuum to it. We’d also like to see what we can do about improving the wiring layout and the airflow.

The Second Stage will be to wipe out the OS. It’s currently got Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 on it, and I don’t like the looks of the new Ubuntu Desktop/Server 10 as it’s been stuffed full of “Social Media” connections. I’m thinking CentOS or FreeNAS maybe, as it’s a pretty solid base for an OS, and I’m pretty familiar, it being the Sandbox of choice for work.

Thirdly, and less todo with the server, is a complete rebuild of the Media Centre (XBMC). This is more to do with the fact that when the server is rebuilt, it’ll take a lot of the network connections down. This isn’t a bad thing, as we’re planning to remove the current SMB system, as it’s massively buggy, and has constant security problems^[1].  So the plan is to go with SSH connections the house, allowing us to also connect to the server from outside of the house securely.  We will each have our own environments to work in, and a public access folder, for friends with guest access to upload things too us.  We’re also using LibTrash, so any files deleted will be caught, rather than lost forever.

Finally, we’re going to be building a 12x2tb Raid 6 NAS, but that’s WAY in the future.

I’ll post pictures as we progress through the project, and add the YUM commands so you know what’s we’re doing.

^[1]Not so much with people having too much access, usually from having too little. If I try to change the security, SMB stops working all together.