Josh Koffman wrote:
> Hi all. I've been asked to help out a small non-profit in setting up a
> little network in their new offices. The network isn't going to be
> anything intense, just a small server that will act as a repository
> for their files (at the moment they each keep a copy of the file...it
> makes versioning a nightmare) and possibly some printer sharing.
> 
> Cost is of course an issue, otherwise I'd just recommend buying one of
> the all in one server boxes available. There are a number of slightly
> older computers available, so I'm thinking about the possibility of
> making a Linux based box that took care of their needs.

I'd suggest an old box with some flavour of Linux on it. Get one of the
multi-purpose distros. Debian would probably be a good choice, so would
be a server Ubuntu. Gentoo would also work nicely if you can handle it
(it's what I use).

I once had to set up a print server, with a couple interesting
requirements: it had to handle a parallel port Laser printer, and an USB
color inkjet, and it had to server two independent networks, and provide
both printers to each. I used an old Celeron box with an extra network
card and two instances of Samba on it, one for each network, both
handling both printers through CUPS all running on Gentoo. We had old
non-OSX boxes that did not handle SMB shares, so we used the LPR
protocol for those (CUPS can handle LPR through xinetd). OSX can handle
all three common printing protocols I believe (all of which were
supported by my box): LPR, HTTP/CUPS, and SMB (OSX uses CUPS itself I
believe). To date, I believe it still works flawlessly, with no
maintenance whatsoever since it was setup (besides occasional reboots).

For file sharing, SMB should work nicely for OSX and windows. NFS will
work with OSX and other *nixes.

> Here's the part that I'm stumbling at: there will be a mix of Windows
> and Mac users at the office. I can find howtos on how to make a
> Windows file server using Samba, but I have no idea how OSX does file
> sharing. Does anyone know of a Linux distribution that's tailored
> towards doing file and print sharing? Something like the ones that are
> tailored to be routers would be ideal.

A router distro is waaay too limited - they are usually targetted at
very small systems that run from a floppy disk. Go with one of the
full-blown distros. Best would be a server-capable distro that is fairly
modular, so that you can install only what you need.

> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Josh


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Hector Martin (hector@marcansoft.com)
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