Partitioning Advice and Samba+NFS

[Megahurts]

Hi, not sure if this is the right place to be posting, but here goes.....

I've just gotten hold of a an old Sun Ultra1 Creator with 2 73gb discs, and I'm considering installing debian on it for a use a samba server at home as I'm sick and tired of my kids using my current Win2k file server for a dumping ground for virues and spyware and I'd like some advice on the partitioning scheme I should use. I believe that discs format to around 68gb, giving a total in the region of 135gb total storage without the OS.

My current setup is for every member of the family to have thier own home drive, and then a shared drive (currently setup using Microsoft AD and DFS) accross two Win2k Servers with a total of 500ish Gb total disk space, containing stuff like music, my software library and the odd movie. I'm not fussed about ditching the AD as I only set it up to see if I could and I seem to be the only one that logs in using my own ID (Why don't UK schools teach basic IT security?!), so I'm quite happy to blow the DFS away as once I've got the Ultra running I'll migrate the data and rebuild the servers with Linux.

So my questions are:

Given that I'll have something in the region of 120GB of space to use what would be the best partitioning scheme. I'm planning on having around 20gb availiable for /home which I'll use for the current home$ shares and the rest as shared storage, so assuming a generous 15gb for the OS and swap, that leaves SDA as follows:

SDA
/ 14gb
swap 1gb max
/home 20gb

with approx 33gb free space left, and SDB with 68gb free. Should I then mount the whole SDB at say /dfsroot and then mount the remain space on SDA inside (/dfsroot/whatever) or the other way round.

My second question is:
Once I've got the Ultra up and running and all the useful data migrated to it etc I'm going to rebuild the two win2k boxes with linux to a) stop the kids using them as desktops and b) because I can. The current set up on the 2k boxes is using Dynamic discs, to give one or two large volumes spread accross three or four devices. Having had a very (very) brief read of LVM it appears I can do something similar with Linux, so once I've got the other two boxes rebuilt with nice shiny empty data areas can I then use NFS to nest these into /dfsroot on the Ultra?

[nevin180]

You could try using LVM, and combining the end of sda and all of sdb into one nice big logical volume. You can also most certainly use NFS to nest your other two computers' drives within that space.

[Megahurts]

Thanks Nevin,

It looks like my weekend is going to be busy......

[cybertron]

It looks like my weekend is going to be busy......

And fun. Don't forget that part.

[Megahurts]

OK, So after spending most of yesterday installing Deb on the SPARC box, I've decided I don't know as much as I thought I did.....

A slight issue with the SPARC.
The 2x 72Gb drives were from an IBM server under W2k, and so after installing Deb, the Sun OpenBoot errored with *lots* of bad magics....
One trip to work to grab a set of Solaris install CD's and 10 hours of lowlevel formating later Deb installed succesfully

Whilst waiting for the format to complete I audited my current server boxes and had a re-think on the best way to go:

Current Setup

OVERNET
Win2k Server
Physical Discs
8gb IDE
40gb IDE
40gb IDE
8gb SCSI
18gb SCSI
Total: 115gb 105gb actual (Disc overhead etc)

Shares
\Overnet 29Gb
\ISOs 29Gb
\Shared 5Gb

2KSERVER
Win2k Adv Server
Physical Discs
20gb
20gb
10gb

Shares
\netlogon 0.1GB
\Kazzaa - 0.5Gb Defunct
\Kids 0.5Gb
\Music 16Gb
\thekennel - 6GB DFS Root


New Setup

GANDALF (New)
Linux with LVM, SMB and NFS
Physical Discs
140gb SCSI
Partitions
/swap 512mb
/ 5gb
/home 10gb
/gondor 50gb Replaces \thekennel
/Music 50gb Symlink /gondor/music


Aragorn (Overnet)
Linux with LVM, SMB, and NFS
Assume 110gb total disc
Partions
/swap 1gb
/ 5gb
/Overnet 50gb NFS mount /gondor/Overnet
/ISOs 50gb NFS mount /gondor/isos

Legolas (2kserver)
Partions
/swap 1gb
/ 5gb
/Shared 40gb NFS mount /gondor/shared


Frodo (new)
5gb Disc 350mhz PII
OPtion 1
Win2k Adv Server
DHCP, DNS, WINS
PDC

Option 2
Linux
DHCP, DNS, SMB, NFS
PDC and NFS Root

Now I need to decided between ditching W2k completly for the server side or using one of my old boxes as a Windows PDC. My (much) preffered option is to get W2K as 1) I'll no longer need the bleech and scrubbing brush after each reboot and 2) My kids will no longer be able to use the servers as a honeypot for spyware and viruses.

My main concern is that having skimmed a couple of SMB-PDC how-to's I'm not sure how complicated the migration is going to be and secondly, one of the servers (Overnet) is also used as a client for....Overent and Bittorrent, I know I can use *nix torrent clients, but the last time I tried Overnet under *nix I was having to kill it and restart every couple of days, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.....