[nylug-talk] Slim home server for samba and subversion (and possibly IMAP)

[Alexander L. Belikoff]

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Hello everybody,

I've been using a spare PC running Debian as a home server for the last
several years. This server has basically the following responsibilities:

- - Serving files (music/pictures/documents) via SAMBA. In particular, it
serves the MP3 files for the iTunes running on my desktop, which already
makes iPod syncs somewhat slowish.
- - Acting as a Subversion server (over SSH)
- - Downloading my mailbox(es) from the ISP via fetchmail and serving them
via IMAP for my home PCs.

While it's been working well, I cannot help thinking that having a
full-fledged PC for such meager list of responsibilities is an overkill.
I'd like to explore some alternatives. One is using a NAS device with no
server functionality - basically, a network disk. This has a drawback
that it would not be able to run a Subversion server, so one would have
to make subversion directly update shared storage which is not elegant
and prone to repo corruption. It would also rule out the IMAP mailbox.

The other option would be to run a "slim" server - something that is
barely larger than a NAS device but is capable of running SSH,
Subversion and imapd. So my question is whether someone has experience
with using such devices.

Some poking around the Net suggested looking at BuffaloTech LinkStation
devices. They already run Linux, are quite open for hacking, and have
dedicated (and active) following with several actively maintained
Debian-based distributions. One could use such a device to create a slim
server.

The problem is, there is a world of difference between something that
works well and something that is merely a proof of concept. In this
case, I do need something that does work well - I cannot afford having a
home server that is either flaky or crawling when serving the files (I
am not going to stream video from it, but, as I said, I'd like my iPod
syncs to stay within a 5-7 minute range). Therefore, I'd really
appreciate some info from people who have experience using such a setup
for practical real-life purposes. Moreover, any pointers to an
alternative device/setup would be also highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
- -- Sasha
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