[X4U] Cheapest "server" set up?

[Neil Laubenthal]

At 00:23 -0500  on 7/2/05, Anne-Marie Concepcion wrote:


>In my little home network of 3 powerbooks and one PC desktop, with 
>at most 2 users on the network at any one time, I need to add a 
>"server." I put it in quotes because I'm not sure I really need OS X 
>Server software ($500) nor a dedicated Mac to run it (at least $500 
>for a Mac mini).
>
>But if I do, I do. Thought I'd see if anyone here has jury-rigged 
>anything successfully, or can suggest a solution that either a) lets 
>me install the server software on one of the underused Mac laptops; 
>or b) lets me use a Mac mini or underused Mac laptop as a server, no 
>server software required.

You definitely don't need OS X 'Server' for this . . . regular 
Panther or Tiger will do fine.

What you want to do is pick one machine . . .you can use either one 
of the laptops that's on all the time or you can pick up a used 
G4/AGP for a couple hundred . . .they're pretty cheap these days and 
make very nice fileservers for up to say 10 clients.

You'll also need a copy of the free Sharepoints since standard 
fileshareing doesn't let you easily share anything other than the 
whole disk.

I do this at home . . .it works nicely for sharing with 2 other 
desktop Macs and 3 laptops as well as a PC.

1. After installing OS X on the 'server' install Sharepoints. I 
created a directory at the root of the hard disk and named it Lurch 
(you know, the butler who serves things). Used Sharepoints to share 
it out. Created a separate user account on the server named 
'fileshare' and gave fileshare full permissions to Lurch. Make sure 
you enable Windows sharing as well in Sharepoints.

2. On each of the other machines I set up an applescript with only a 
couple of lines in it:

Pause 3
Tell Application "Finder"
mount volume "afp://user:password@location/share"
end tell

For this . . . I mount it via IP so it's user:password at ip/Lurch . . . 
I have set up a static IP on my fileserver for this reason. You can 
also use the Bonjour method which would be 
user:password at G4Neil.local/Lurch in my case. On the PC you need to 
mount it via IP unless you install Bonjour for Windows.

This script is compiled as a stand alone application and set to run 
at login on each machine that needs to connect to the fileserver. 
When the laptops go to sleep the volume remains mounted and is 
immediately available at the next login.

I've got a supposedly better script for this purpose that I was given 
. . .haven't tried it yet but I am sure the above one works . . .the 
person that gave me the new one says it works too but I haven't 
checked. Here's the other script.

On run
	DoMount("afp://user:password@location/Share/")
	--doMount("smb://server1/localsite")
	--others as required.

end run
on doMount(myURL)
	try
	mount volume myurl
	on error
	 --snicker privately
	end try
end doMount

This seems to do basically the same thing as the script I'm using . . 
.and also includes the syntax for mounting a Windows share should you 
decide to use the Windows box as the server. It also includes code 
for mounting more than one . . .although my simpler script could also 
be modified that way.

I personally wouldn't use a laptop for this purpose . . .I would use 
either a Mini or a used G4 for the purpose. I have several backup 
routines for the fileserver in place . . .a combination of PSyncX 
which does a daily Finder readable backup to both another internal 
and and external drive as well as running Retrospect to backup to the 
external FW drive . . these are burned to DVD when they get up to 
4.5GB and the backup recycled in Retrospect. I also use it to backup 
/Users on my laptops every other day via the Retrospect Client 
software.



-- 
===================================================================
Neil
There are only three kinds of stress . . .  your basic nuclear 
stress, cooking stress, and A$$hole stress. All of the three are 
related . . . the key is Jello.