Mint Home Server

[lakehousetech]

I have completed the installation at work, and now we are almost ready to go live (internet wise) once we get a static IP. I'm writing the entire project up because it entails much more than installing knowledge tree. I'm hoping to post some information next week. I have to use it for my thesis as well, so hopefully I'll do a decent job writing it.

[AfterEight]

Hi Lakehousetech,

Thanks for the quick reply and good luck with your thesis.

AfterEight

[lakehousetech]

Thanks. The thesis is on COTS information management systems and sharing, so knowledge tree will be a small portion of it. I'm going to begin documenting the KT project tonight when I get out of work. I hope to post back soon.

[Oceanwatcher]

Lakehousetech,

This sounds great. I am back from my trip and will start to put together my small testserver. From what you have seen so far, would KT be a good system to organize the documents of a household? I am looking for the right software to use for storing copies of receipts, bills etc. There are a couple of really nice products for Mac, but still have not seen any like that for Windows or Linux. Or maybe I have not looked the right places yet Would be nice to have a computer set up as the "feeder" with a scanner. That way, all papers could be scanned and the ones that should be filed could be put far away.

[lakehousetech]

That all depends on what your really looking for in document management. I chose Knowledge Tree specifically for my company document system because it's open source, scalable, and relatively easy to administer. I'll keep you posted either way. I suppose you could just use Samba if you want to set up shared directories with Windows machines.

Also, I am about ready to move my website over to a complete joomla base. I really liked how yours came out, and think the content features will be perfect. I'm doing my upload when I get out of work. I can't wait...it's gonna be so much fun! I'll be in touch.

Chris

[Oceanwatcher]

Has anyone tried these tools?

http://www.debianadmin.com/debian-serve ... s-gui.html

I am going to try to install and see if it will work. Looks very interesting and would be a great basis for a GUI for the server.

Does anyone know of similar admin software for LAMP? That is - NOT web based admin interface?

[Phosgene]

I can't really see what Mint would offer in the server market that any other distro doesn't have. CentOS would be my number 1 distro choice for a server, and OpenBSD if I had choices outside of Linux. Red Hat is always there if you want a more user friendly server. Why do you need everything to be GUI anyway?

[Oceanwatcher]

I want a GUI because I want it to be as simple to operate as possible for anyone with just a minimum of computer and network knowledge.

It is great to be able to run it headless and to be able to remotecontrol it through VNC. But it is important to keep things a similar to the desktop Mint as possible. There is no reason to throw the usability of Mint out the door just because this is a server.

I know there are tons of serversystems to choose from. But take a look at Windows Server. Same GUI as the other OS'es from MS. It absolutely makes sense to stay with one GUI. Get people to be comfortable with one gui on the desktop. So a server will just be an adjusted version of what they already know. In other words, they "know half of it" already.

Hope that made sense to you I am not trying to make a new distro for the advanced crowd. I want to make a Mint server for my home and I want people in my house to eventually move over to Mint. And I need someone there that can help me sometimes with the server.

[lakehousetech]

I agree for the same reasons. The folks I work with are not computer savvy, but if/when I move on to take a better job I want them to be able to administer the server easily without much of a learning curve. We've had our mint server active for over a month now with no problems. Eventually we will go for a more lightweight version of Mint (fluxbox...etc) when it comes time to upgrade knowledge tree again. The performance is good now, and should improve upon upgrade.

[Oceanwatcher]

We've had our mint server active for over a month now with no problems. Eventually we will go for a more lightweight version of Mint (fluxbox...etc) when it comes time to upgrade knowledge tree again. The performance is good now, and should improve upon upgrade.

This is really great news!

I have my testserver up now and I am in the process of cleaning out stuff and installing what is necessary. Also, I am still constantly looking for good desktop GUI's to the different parts of the server.

The first thing I am doing is to install (L)AMP. I need this for a few php applications as well as the need for a dev server for websites. And the absolute easiest way to do this is through Synaptic Package Manager. Just open Synaptic, select "Mark packages by task" under the Edit menu and then select LAMP.

I am very used to phpMyAdmin, but prefer a desktop version if there is something that works well. Any ideas?

Another thing I am looking for is the a better remote desktop solution. Right now, I have remote desktop enabled, but for that to work, I need to set up automatic login. I use TightVNC on Windows to access the server and it works really well. But would prefer something that allowed me to connect without automatic login.

[lakehousetech]

I don't have the server set up for remote access yet, as we are still waiting for the okay to use it permanently. I am using a KVM switch for now to go between the server and my workstation. I'm sticking with PHPmyAdmin personally, as it's all I've ever used. Not sure what else is available....

[Oceanwatcher]

Seems like this is not the only place people discuss GUI for servers. I found this thread:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/68/

Could not avoid putting in a vote and a comment When I started reading the thread, I really did not think the idea would survive. But to my surprise, a lot of very understanding people commented. And the thread is marked as being in development. This gives hope for the future! And with the way Mint is going - configuration scripts - it might become a lot easier in the future to make a Mint Home Server.

[lakehousetech]

I don't think that it's difficult to use Mint as a server right now, whether for home or business. I know I really need to post my walkthrough from my installation...I have just been so backed up finishing grad school. I don't even have my website back up yet. Still finishing up the graphics. The only thing I would like to see is a lightweight 64 bit version of Mint to be released. I think the performance increase would be significant on the server I built at work as compared to the main edition.

[Oceanwatcher]

If you need any assistance installing/configuring OpenGroupware please post on our lists. CalDAV support of trunk has been tested with Lightning 0.8

I have been looking at some groupware solutions and they are either not very active, or they are WAY too complicated and bloated. You can not be everything to everyone, so I appreciate a solid foundation with only a few functions, but extensible through plugins that is not needed for the normal stuff.

To me, the most important things are a calendar and a great addressbook. It is ok to have other things, but these have to be there, work, and be solid. The addressbook MUST cover all information from Outlook. It is a bit sad that MS Outlook is the reference, but a lot of people use it, and if they will loose information by using the groupware server, then it is not interesting. For my own sake, I want a plugin that gives me really good sync with Plaxo. This service saves me for A LOT of manual updates.

Other things, like to do's, notes etc is ok, but not essential. What is more important is sync to mobile phones and handheld devices. SYncML SHOULD be the tool for this, but I am not sure how active the deelopment is.

As for OpenGroupware, soome parts of the website has not been updated since 2005. That makes me a little bit curious. How is the development activity? On paper, OpenGroupware seems nice, the intentions are great. But how is it in real life? Anyone tried it beyond mere play?

[ElQuia]

Oceanwatcher et al: you guys are a bit to technical for me

As a end user I would LOVE the idea of home server like that. @home there are 4 pc's and 2 notebooks, each one with music, films, etc going on, and a LOT of duplicated multimedia files ...and of course the usual complaints about having to leave a pc on to be able to share, bla, bla....

For me it would be nice if: it were headless, had soft raid (I´m looking for something cheap), it HAS to interact with Linux and W!nd@ws clients, and must be absolutely reliable....

I Love the idea

[Oceanwatcher]

Sorry for being too technical, but sometimes it is needed to "iron" out things. Hopefully, after a lot more researching, we can have something that is both easy to install and easy to configure, even for those that do not run servers for a living or have a special interest in doing so.

The idea is to have the same interface, no matter if it is a desktop or a server, but with all the wonderful powers of Linux hidden just below the surface should you ever have the urge to go deeper.

I am trying out Essential PIM on the server right now. It is a low cost PIM software that can be shared on the network. The downside is that you have to install Firebird for it to run shared. It can not use mySQL. Maybe if enough people asked for it....

I am still looking for an open source candidate to fill this position, but as stated earlier, I want something that fits smaller needs. 2-10 people is the reange I am looking for.

[ElQuia]

Oceanwatcher: hey , technical jargon doesn't bother me, as a linux noob, I gota learn ...

Just remember something: If you roam to far away from what most people use every day they won't use it, and for a server like this, (supposing one of its focus was a home server) that is:

Mail & Calendar: M$ Outlook or Windows Mail or OExpress, and Evolution or Thunderbird (w/sunbird or lightning) [in my case it´s Outlook 2007 (on the vista pc's) and Evolution (on the Mint pc´s) ]
Music: itunes, JRiver Media Jukebox & JRiver Media Center, foobar. Not using any music progie on Mint. Havn't found anything as powerful as JRiver yet.
Pics: a lot of programs - Movies: a lot of programs,

Essential PIM I understand imports and exports easily from outlook, don't know about evolution... music, movies and pics, are just files, to share, it would be nice to have some kind of database proggie that could be accessed from clientes showing whats on the server, kind of "library" program o "classification" program ...

Any way, I love the idea .. If you guys come up with something, I can beta (or alpha) test Just have to know what minimum hardware specs we are targeting ....

[ronnoc]

Not using any music progie on Mint. Haven't found anything as powerful as JRiver yet.

Check out Amarok 2. It's really good. As a bonus, it runs on any OS, so once you get the hang of it you can use it on all your PC's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarok_(software)#Amarok_2.0
http://amarok.kde.org/

Cheers

[ElQuia]

amarok, ok wil try. I guess there's a version for Felicia or a Ubuntu version at least ? Will look arround. I'm all in for trying new things

[lakehousetech]

Hey all! I know I've been a bit of a ghost lately on the forums. I've been busy with work and school, as well as the upcoming holiday. I haven't forgotten about the server project, but have had to put documentation on hold because of additional consulting and web design I've had to perform outside of my regular job. I'm shooting for January to get caught up with everything. I've been reading the last few posts and some of the focus sounds interesting.

@ Oceanwatcher - I was checking out your photo site again, and was just wondering why you've separated your blog site from it? Did you have difficulty integrating certain functions into Joomla? Just curious as I have not considered what approach to take on my site. Enjoy your holiday!