Small NFS box, any ideas?

[Stween]

Hi,

I have a couple of linux machines on my home network (+ two Windows +one FreeBSD, if you include various dual boots). I realised that it would be really handy if I were to have a small box sitting next to the router that would handle NFS traffic only.

I used to work like this -- I had a couple of machines, one of which exported its /home directory for the other to use, was always on, and allowed me to access my files from outside. It was very handy, to say the least...

But circumstances have changed. I don't have the space for a full machine to run just for NFS requests, and certainly don't want it on all the time. In fact, I don't want any PC on all the time. I have to move between my two machines frequently, so very often my files are in the wrong place.

So here's what I'm looking for:

I'd like a small box with a wired ethernet connection and a couple of hard drives, probably implementing RAID5 or somesuch. By small box, I mean small enough for the hardware, a couple of LEDs for status, the power button, and the power & ethernet ports required. On/off operation would pretty much be essential since there's no need to run it if I don't need it for a while, and I don't want to have to ssh into it just to halt it. Equally though, for it to handle ssh connections would be nice, so I could access files when away from home if need be. Configuration would be achieved either via ssh, or perhaps some webmin-style interface.

Anybody know of anything similar, or how I might build something like this that would be cheap, small, quiet, and energy-efficient...?

Perhaps my demands are too high, it just seems like something that somebody out there would have made at some point...


Cheers,
S.

[StarKnight83]

depends on how much money your willing to spend some of the mini-atx boards w/ embedded cpus would work well for this (say with an embedded via processor or whatever) another thought wouldbe to find some kind of embedded board that has IDE support. The latter is what i use for my NAS with a 120GB hdd to store my backups (an embedded powerpc board w/ a promise IDE controller) fits easily w/ the power suppy inside a shoebox

[IsaacKuo]

It seems to be pretty popular to modify an NSLU with Linux:

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/HomePage

[Pafnoutios]

Micro-ATX or BTX. Maybe use 2.5" drives.