Server-services on a P100 1

[bateman23]

Hello,

i've got an old Pentium 100 Mhz, with a 120 GB HD.
I'm just curious: Is it possible to run a Linux-Fileserver with Samba on this system. - Will there be a good - or at least a satisfactory - performance. It is possible to run a ftp-server on this system. (or perhaps even both) ?

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

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Visit me @:

http://www.daniel-purucker.de/

 

[cyoung]

You should be able to support both with no problems. I would reccommend lots of RAM though (128meg at a minimum).

I personally ran an e-mail/ftp server on a P-100 with over 50 users, and never had a problem.

You will however, want to stay away from X-Windows on this, and only use command line tools to administer the box (X-Win will run on this, but it would be very slow)

Good Luck with it!

 

[bateman23]

Thanks a lot ---------------------------------------
Visit me @:

http://www.daniel-purucker.de/

 

[rycamor]

"I would reccommend lots of RAM though (128meg at a minimum)."

Lots of RAM is good, but it might be hard to find this much RAM for an older Pentium. The old 72-pin RAM chips tend to be expensive, unless you can find used ones somewhere. If you work carefully with your system, though, you can get by with far less RAM. I ran a Linux Samba fileserver for 2 years at one small business, having only a 90 Mhz processor, two 450 MB hard drives, and 16 MB RAM. The machine handled shared documents and constantly-updated Access files with no problem at all. The only reason we rebooted was so I could upgrade the system finally.

Most modern Linux distributions are optimized for more high-powered machines, though. I recommend you stay away from RedHat or Mandrake, or most of the popular Linux distributions, because they tend to throw everything on your machine. My personal favorite for low-end machines is Slackware (

http://www.slackware.com).

Slackware is very much like FreeBSD, in that it is aimed at producing a good, Unix-like no-nonsense server. It doesn't tend to overload your system with all kinds of unnecessary services, or visual fluff. The other good choice might be Debian, but I haven't had any experience with it. -------------------------------------------

"Calculus is just the meaningless manipulation of higher symbols"
                          -unknown F student

 

[bateman23]

That are really good news. ;-)
I just realized that the system only has 16 MB of RAM, and as you said "it might be hard to find this much RAM for an older Pentium. The old 72-pin RAM chips tend to be expensive"...

So, running a samba fileserver on that system won't be the problem... or? ,but what about an ftp-server ?
Will this work with that little amount of RAM ?


---------------------------------------
Visit me @:

http://www.daniel-purucker.de/

 

[cyoung]

It will work, but you may notice slowdowns when the system is swapping. How many clients will you be handling with this machine? If it is on a home network, with 2 or 3 clients and 5-10 FTP sessions at a time, then you should be ok. Each SAMBA session uses @1meg of RAM, plus the SAMBA daemon uses another 1meg or so.

I would setup your machine with 64meg of SWAP space, and then try to find another 16meg of RAM, that way when you get the machine upto 32meg, your SWAP will already be right. If you have 2 or more hard drives, then setup your swap on the drive that will be the least used, or better yet, setup 2 swap partitions (one on each drive)

Check with

http://www.pricewatch.com

you can sometimes find good deals on older ram. Also, you may want to consider checking out ebay.

Good Luck!