need some ideas

[SiR_dude]

Have an old Dell GX1 server at work that I turned on for fun the other day. Booted up to FreeBSD - yay, I know nothing about any of the Linux/Unix OS's. I need some ideas what I can do for fun with the old girl - sort of a project. Any takers?

[Zuhaib]

Umm, FreeBSD != Linux.

Well you can do a NAS, using it to store your media and share it with all your other computers. And if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3 you can use it to share stuff.

[SiR_dude]

Originally Posted by Zuhaib

Umm, FreeBSD != Linux.

Well you can do a NAS, using it to store your media and share it with all your other computers. And if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3 you can use it to share stuff.

From www.freebsd.org:

"FreeBSD® is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon™), amd64 compatible (including Opteron™, Athlon™64, and EM64T), UltraSPARC®, IA-64, PC-98 and ARM architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley."

It's based on a derivative of a version UNIX - so as I wrote, I know nothing about Linux/UNIX operating systems. Might not have been accurate, but as Linux and UNIX are quite similar, I group them all together.

Anyway..it will have to be sort of useful at work, I can't just claim it for play. Unfortunately

*Edit - just noticed your post count vs. join date - holy toledo! And +1 for still being around, I thought I was an "oldie" in terms of longevity here...

[argatoga]

I wouldn't recommend starting off with FreeBSD, while I love it, it isn't the best Unix to start off with. I would recommend Ubuntu, it has all the good parts of Debian without the license nazis and once a millennium release dates.

As for what to do with it, I would recommend a file/print server, then work from there. Samba (Windows), NFS (UNIX), and netatalk (Mac) are pretty easy to set-up and play with.

[Zuhaib]

Originally Posted by SiR_dude

From www.freebsd.org:

"FreeBSD® is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon™), amd64 compatible (including Opteron™, Athlon™64, and EM64T), UltraSPARC®, IA-64, PC-98 and ARM architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley."

It's based on a derivative of a version UNIX - so as I wrote, I know nothing about Linux/UNIX operating systems. Might not have been accurate, but as Linux and UNIX are quite similar, I group them all together.

Anyway..it will have to be sort of useful at work, I can't just claim it for play. Unfortunately

*Edit - just noticed your post count vs. join date - holy toledo! And +1 for still being around, I thought I was an "oldie" in terms of longevity here...

Understand, but dont let BSD or Linux nuts hear that as the would kill you =P

Ahh well then file server is a good thing to play around with as is. You can load Samba on it for Window sharing (and then from there move on to NSF for Unix share), and install some E-Mail software like postfix and play with it as an E-Mail server (if your work lets you). Those are things also have application in the work field.

argatoga is a bit right, FreeBSD can be a bit tough to cut your teeth on for the first time. But Ubuntu is not that easy as some make it, and, while many use it for server use i dont think the base install is that great for server use as it loads a lot of junk.

Yeah I think beside the few mods like Cruzz and etc I might be the oldest regular user. I think we need a new group, the OG Group, for the old users =P Viper of course is the original OG.

[SiR_dude]

Originally Posted by Zuhaib

Understand, but dont let BSD or Linux nuts hear that as the would kill you =P

*Runs and hides*

I guess I've really shown my lack of knowledge about that end of the computing realm, eh? I think I will start with basic file sharing. Or maybe see if I can use it to play random tracks for our phone system's "On hold" audio..

We have our entire network running off of a Windows 2k3 server - so as per your advice, I should be looking at Samba...

*starts Googling*...thanks to all for the advice..I'm a server newbie...

[Kip_6666]

Not really sure how old it is, but there are enough things you can do with old servers.

Just a few random ideas:

-File server, FTP or samba
-Webserver, a nice intranet
-Firewall, proxy
-Timeserver, ntp
-Nagios to monitor the rest of your servers to check if they're still running
-SMTP collector to check on your other servers too , munin, cacti etc
-Mailserver
-Backup machine, attach a raid unit and you can cover many important files.