B. Mann Consulting

I recently decommissioned a Linux (e-smith, to be exact) server at home. Its main job was to store pictures, and now that I'm using Flickr, there was no need to have it sitting in our living room.

But, there are a ton of pictures on there that still needed to be taken off. Gigs of pictures. Which are just generally a pain to transfer over the network.

I have an external Firewire enclosure for IDE hard drives, so I thought I would experiment in trying to get the Linux file system (EXT2) mounted on Mac OS X. Long story short, after much Googling, I found ext2fsx. Like many Mac applications, it "just worked" and is really user friendly.

Lloyd forwarded me news from the E-smith project:

Effective immediately, contribs.org and the development and support of the SME Server will be handled by Lycoris (www.lycoris.com and www.lycoris.org). Lycoris is a successful Linux company that has developed a reputation as a world-wide leader in Desktop Linux Operating Systems with their Lycoris Desktop/LX product line.
Contribs.org: News

Having e-smith once more in a "supported" mode could mean interesting things. Of course, having the "free" version available was great for lots of consultants catering to schools, small businesses, and non-profits, so hopefully Lycoris will continue to provide ISOs for those uses.

For really robust, turn-key Linux based servers, I have taken to recommending the Net Integrator. Their per-user licensing is a bit strange in the Linux world, but I really like their integrated server hardware solutions, and they do offer a complete Exchange replacement (which still lets you run Outlook with full server support on the desktop).

Roland is making a big move. Switching blogging platforms (Radio to Movable Type), switching hosting platforms (Windows to Linux), then moving his host to a co-lo. Wow!

This is a Big Job™. Good luck with everything, Roland.

A HowTo guide on connecting a webcam to do video monitoring and motion detecting using your E-smith server.

This is the script I use to keep my domains pointed at my home server box. The user docs page may also prove useful, plus you can get an RPM for E-smith here.

I've got my home server all tricked-out with various things now.

It used to only have a 2GB hard drive, which I knew I was going to migrate at some point, so I just stopped fiddling with it. As it was, it stayed up for 200 days straight, and the beginning of that 200 was a power outage. So, it was up for probably about a year or so.

It is, of course, running E-Smith. Now the latest version, 5.6. Or it was, until the 6.0beta which literally just got released...think I'll pass on that in favour of stability for now.

If you haven't yet tried the E-smith server for your home server box, perhaps now is the time to try this developer release.

I was quite frustrated with the server box that I have.

Things are better now. Except for the jet turbine.

In the last 24 hours, I have downloaded 3 different distributions that I hoped would serve as an easy to use, easy to configure, home server.