Which Linux Distro?

[limbimtimwim]

The trouble with most linux distro's is when it all goes Pete Tong. There's no easy "repair CD" or "roll back" feature to get you out of trouble. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this but it's still not nuBe friendly enough to be on most desktops IMHO. Almost...but not quite.

I've found if you use it as designed, it won't crap out. For example Debian (And therefor Debian based distros like Ubuntu) make sure everything you put on it works together. You shouldn't be able to mess it up using their software packages and their configurators. Start editing important things in /etc and installing your own stuff could break it. Of course, I do that all the time, but I'm old hat at it..

One suggestion I make to people is that they put /home on a seperate partition (Well, logical volume these days) so if they ruin the OS, they can just reinstall from scratch and make sure they don't reformat /home. Then they don't loose any data. You can install Ubuntu or Debian in about 30 minutes and be back on your feet again quick.

You honestly don't want anything less than RAID1 if you're going to stick it in a corner and forget about it (unless you're gonna piss about with backups or have another box to rsync to).

Come on man, we are on a budget here. 100% redundant disks is expensive. Mind you, when I was at uni I kept my work on raid1.

[TerminalAddict]

raid1 is not a replacement for backups

[scracha]

raid1 is not a replacement for backups

Shrrup Terminal, I'm trying to punt my wares. No, seriously.....
In the real world you'll find most home users just don't do regular backups and that's one reason I'm saying I'd go for at least raid1. People also get very dependant on their NAS and stick EVERYTHING on it. Lose the NAS data and there's some very p!ssed off bunnies.

Both the Thecus and the ReadyNAS have excellent automated backups and support external USB drives though. The ReadyNAS also supports Rsync, Ftp, has multiple "roll back" and comes with good Mac and PC backup software. However, it's WAY more expensive.

Qnap do an even cheaper "enclosure" (I hate that word, it implies a cheapo USB or firewire enclosure) but after 2 international calls and an email I gave up trying to get a hold of them.

One other suggestion is to have the cheapo linux NAS and then stick a USB, firewire or preferably eSATA drive in it from time to time for backups. Still a PITA though.

[TerminalAddict]

depends on the data I guess

I've got combinations here
Some servers have raid5 etc etc .. with "OK" backups
Some servers have raid 1 with exceptional backups
Some servers have a single disk manually mirrored on to an external USB drive (this quite a good cheap options, you can't keep incrementals, but recovery is very fast .. chuck backup drive in another machine, then boot)

what I really want is (if you can sell it to me) is real time replication on a filesystem (or even a block) level, across 2 NAS boxes .. spanning raid across 2 devices won't work due to file locking (actually row level locking and table locking)

[limbimtimwim]

what I really want is (if you can sell it to me) is real time replication on a filesystem (or even a block) level, across 2 NAS boxes .. spanning raid across 2 devices won't work due to file locking (actually row level locking and table locking)

You want a netapp ( www.netapp.com ) mate. Got one here, it's brilliant.

[TerminalAddict]

looking at those

[scracha]

what I really want is (if you can sell it to me) is real time replication on a filesystem (or even a block) level, across 2 NAS boxes .. spanning raid across 2 devices won't work due to file locking (actually row level locking and table locking)

Best it can do is continuous rsync of NAS "snapshot". Obviously the first one would take a wee while but thereafter it would be fast. The rackmounted 1100 would be better for this. Two of them can fit in a 1U rack (back to back) and as they have dual gigabit ethernet one port could be dedicated to the rsync backup. If the master unit fails it's just a case of chaging the IP address of the failed units (and if using user mode security the user and group ID's should be matched). The ReadyNAS will create locks on the incomplete rsync job so that two won't run concurrently.

Would this be good enough?

[skelstar]

Well I finally scored a crappy laptop (cheers W) and have installed Ubuntu (6.06 LTS). Runs a tiny bit slow on a 2.2GHz Celeron (don't know how much RAM) but it runs pretty well.

Have got Internet working fine (piss easy) but am struggling to get a Samba share working on the network (connecting to it with Macs). Pretty sure that Samba is intalled on the machine but am steadily getting confused . Will struggle on.

Yay...no more f**king Windows!!! (until I go back to work on Monday anyways)...