Linux Home Server

[Huntsman]

This is going to be sorta of a build log but I'm not going to post this on the Build Logs sections because I probably not going to have too much pictures to show. Maybe, maybe not we'll see how it goes.

 

For my server I want it to be able to:

1. Share files via Samba (easiest since there it has to be shared to Android and Windows devices)
2. Backup my laptop (it's running Ubuntu so I'm thinking rsync?)
3. Host some virtual machine (I like to play with VMs)
4. Host OwnCloud (or some other form of personal cloud via Apache or lightppd)
5. Emit server (Linus recommended this on his Android swapping videos and it's great)
6. Torrenting server

 

My current server (which I'm planning to replace) can do some of these but the performance is not really that great. Here are my current server's specs:

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (some ancient 1.8GHz chip)

MOBO: Some Acer OEM board

RAM: 1GB DDR2 (but half of them gets dedicated to "integrated graphics" in BIOS and can't be changed)

Storage: Cruzer 8GB thumbdrive as bootdrive, 3x WD Blue 1TB in raidz1 for storage

PSU: Xigmatek Stealth Vector 650W (overkill I know but it was on sale)

OS: NAS4Free 9.1.0.1

 

 

So this server is just SLOW. It was a given to me for free by a client I build a PC for because the dude didn't know what to do with this PC. Looked it up online and it is an Acer EC51GM for those who want to know. The server was hosting OwnCloud, samba share and torrent server. With that CPU and only 500+MB of actual usable RAM left, yea the performance ain't great.

 

 

As you can see, this is with the server idling. When I have a file transfer going on (at a slow 20MBps max) the CPU would go up as high as 60% on both cores.

 

Hence I am proposing a new server build. The hardware for the new build isn't going to be new either (I'm asian and poor so fml right?). I will be using most of the hardware from my old gaming rig. Since college started, I don't have much time to game. Plus the rig is 4 years old and not up to par anymore. New server specs:

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 (used to OC this to 3.8GHz no prob)

MOBO: Asus P5Q SE PLUS

RAM: A mix of 2x 2GB DDR2 Kingston ValueRAM and 2x 1GB DDR2 Corsair stuff

GPU: Saphire ATI HD5750 1GB (servers don't need this I know but maybe I can do some bitcoin mining or something with this)

Storage: Cruzer 8GB thumbdrive as bootdrive, 4x WD Blue 1TB in raidz1 for storage

PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850W (again overkill but it was already in the casing)

Casing: Thermaltake Commander MS1 (old gaming rig case)

OS: Ubuntu Server 12.04.3 LTS

 

I've already put together the new server but haven't actually installed any OS or drives yet. Currently trying out the OS in VMs via VirtualBox so that I can get a better picture of what it is going to be like when I do it for real. Also, I have Final Exams coming up in 2 weeks so I wont be spending too much time in this. Will post updates as I go along. Maybe this can be a guide for someone else who is building something similar.

 

If there is something I'm doing wrong or there is a better way of doing things, please do tell me as me myself also thinks that there has gotta be a better way. Till then, see ya.

[Huntsman]

UPDATE 1:

 

Been doing some researching and here are some of the references that I currently use. Will update as I go.

 

1. ZFS
http://www.latentexistence.me.uk/zfs-and-ubuntu-home-server-howto/
http://dansysadm.com/blog/installing_zfs_on_ubuntu_1204_n40l.html

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man8/zfs.8.html

2. samba share
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/samba-fileserver.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/samba-fileprint-security.html
http://superuser.com/questions/274793/creating-a-samba-share-where-everyone-has-write-access

3. virtualbox
http://santi-bassett.blogspot.com/2013/01/installing-virtualbox-on-ubuntu-server.html

 

Am getting very excited about the build. Currently testing things out in virtual machines so that I can get a feel of what I am dealling with. Also I am thinking of running the OS on top of a hypervisor such as Xen or EZXi. If I go the hypervisor route, I might be able to build the pfsense firewall and my server into one box instead of having a seperate box for pfsense. The only concern I have is that ZFS might not like this as I've read somewhere that for ZFS' to work correctly it has to have direct control over the drives. Correct me if I'm wrong..

 

Thats it for this update.

[alpenwasser]

The only concern I have is that ZFS might not like this as I've read somewhere that for ZFS' to work correctly it has to have direct control over the drives. Correct me if I'm wrong..

From what I've read, ZFS likes to have direct control over your devices, but it will

work without it (albeit probably not very well). However, most of what I've read

relates to RAID controllers interfering with ZFS, not with running ZFS on a virtual

machine.

This post on serverfault might be of interest to you. According to the response,

it should work pretty nicely as long as your virtual machine can provide direct

access to the storage devices to ZFS via direct pass-through. I'm very inexperienced

when it comes to VM's though, so how to accomplish this I can't say.

[Huntsman]

UPDATE 2:

 

Graduated from playing in VMs to playing with the real hardware. Bumped into quite a few problems which I will list out here.

 

1. I will get ZFS module not found error everytime there is a kernel update. So each time I have to do

 

# dkms status

 

To get the versions which is in my case 0.6.2, then I type

 

# dkms remove -m zfs -v 0.6.2 --all

# dkms remove -m spl -v 0.6.2 --all

# dkms add -m spl -v 0.6.2

# dkms add -m zfs -v 0.6.2

# dkms install -m spl -v 0.6.2

# dkms install -m zfs -v 0.6.2

 

2. Samba share would not get detected properly by both Linux and Windows Client. Sometimes it would just pop up right away and sometimes it would take some time before it shows. Other times it just plainly wouldn't show up at all. Haven't found any solution to this so maybe you guys can help.

 

3. Samba share permission issues. I wanted the share to be readible and writable by everyone so that my mom would not have to key in username and password everytime. Solved by changing the ownership of the shared file to nobody:nogroup. I know this isn't the most secured settings by any stretch but this is how I'm going to run it.

 

4. ZFS would not mount properly. My pool name is zpool1 and I have created the zpool in raidz1. Everything gets detected nicely including the disks and capacity but my problem starts when I try to share zpool1 through SAMBA. Apparently /zpool1 is mounted in root and when I share it, the clients only see the capacity of my boot drive instead of the zpool. The boot drive is a USB thumbdrive and the zpool is 4x1TB so the capacity that should be presented to the client is 3TB. I have no idea what is going on. I have tried creating sub filesystems inside of the zpool and share those out instead but I still get the same results. Help?

 

 

That's all for this update. Now I see why some people would rather just use WHS or something like FreeNAS. There is seriously alot of work that has to go into making a Linux server, especially when you are a newb in Linux. Will update more as things progresses.

[Huntsman]

From what I've read, ZFS likes to have direct control over your devices, but it will

work without it (albeit probably not very well). However, most of what I've read

relates to RAID controllers interfering with ZFS, not with running ZFS on a virtual

machine.

This post on serverfault might be of interest to you. According to the response,

it should work pretty nicely as long as your virtual machine can provide direct

access to the storage devices to ZFS via direct pass-through. I'm very inexperienced

when it comes to VM's though, so how to accomplish this I can't say.

 

Thanks, for the response. It seems that being in a VM has no noticeable effect on ZFS stability but I will not be going the hypervisor route as I want to seperate the pfsense firewall from the server. Else if the machine goes down, it becomes a single point of failure for my network as pfsense which acts as a router will be taken down too.

 

Also, I found out that implementing hypervisor cost alot for the license and I'm a poor asian LOL. So I won't be using hypervisor anytime soon.

[N7_Zer0]

Vmware ESXi hypervisor is free. We use it at work on our Dell servers hosting around 8 VM's each.

 

2. Samba share would not get detected properly by both Linux and Windows Client. Sometimes it would just pop up right away and sometimes it would take some time before it shows. Other times it just plainly wouldn't show up at all. Haven't found any solution to this so maybe you guys can help.

 

3. Samba share permission issues. I wanted the share to be readible and writable by everyone so that my mom would not have to key in username and password everytime. Solved by changing the ownership of the shared file to nobody:nogroup. I know this isn't the most secured settings by any stretch but this is how I'm going to run it.

 

 

2. I'm assuming you're using the "Network" shortcut in Explorer. This will scan the network and usually takes 30-45 sec for the samba share to appear. A better way is to type in the server's hostname or IP (eg. \\servername, \\192.168.1.100) then map it as a network location so it's always showing.

 

 

3. That's how I do it too (for public shares). Here's the typical way of doing it. Pretty sure you did something similar:
 

<smb.conf>

security = user

[Public]
   comment = Public Share
   path = /srv/public
   browsable = yes
   guest ok = yes

   guest only = yes
   read only = no
   create mask = 0755

 

<terminal>

sudo mkdir -p /srv/public

sudo chown nobody.nogroup /srv/public/

 

 

 

For protected shares I do this (assuming my username is "myname" and is the same user I created when I installed Ubuntu). This will only allow the owner access.

If I log into my Windows machine using "myname" you won't have to type in a password to access the share as Windows will pass this information automatically.

 

 

<smb.conf>

security = user

[My Share]
   comment = Personal Share
   path = /srv/myshare

   valid users = myname
   browsable = yes
   read only = no
   create mask = 0700

 

<terminal>

sudo smbpasswd myname (assign a samba password to user - I put the same password as my Windows login)

sudo mkdir -p /srv/myshare

sudo chown myname /srv/myshare/

sudo chmod 700 /srv/myshare/ (changes directory permission so that groups and other users cannot access it)

 

 

If you only want your mom and yourself to access it, you can give it group permissions but here's where I'm not entirely sure if I'm doing it right:

 

 

<smb.conf>

security = user

[My Share]
   comment = Personal Share
   path = /srv/myshare

   valid users = @groupname
   browsable = yes
   read only = no
   create mask = 0770

 

<terminal>

sudo adduser mom (add linux account)

sudo smbpasswd -a mom (add user to samba and set the password to be the same as her windows one)

sudo addgroup groupname

sudo adduser mom groupname (adds mom to group)

sudo adduser myname groupname

 

sudo chown myname:groupname /srv/myshare/

sudo chmod 770 /srv/myshare/

 

 

 

PS. I'm also fairly new to Linux and currently building a server as well using Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS which will be a file/backup server as well as streaming using Plex. Played around with it using VMWare player and I think I got the hang of it.

 

Here's the build list:

 

CPU: AMD A4-5300 Trinity (got it for $35! will upgrade to Kaveri next year)
MB: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI (m-ITX)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LP 2x4GB DDR3-1600 White 1.35V
CASE: Fractal Node 304
PSU: Seasonic G Series 450W

HDD: WD Reds (not sure on capacity yet)

RAID: Thinking about getting an LSI 9260-4i with BBU but not sure if it works on this particular consumer board

[Huntsman]

Vmware ESXi hypervisor is free. We use it at work on our Dell servers hosting around 8 VM's each.

 

Yes the hypervisor itself is free, but I think the controlling software that is installed on the administration PC needs a license?

 

Also I didn't have problem accessing the share itself, but the folders in the shares is problematic. They are sometimes buggy.

 

 

PS. I'm also fairly new to Linux and currently building a server as well using Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS which will be a file/backup server as well as streaming using Plex. Played around with it using VMWare player and I think I got the hang of it.

Plex would be a pain in the neck to install as there are just so much that has to work together. I am trying to get Emit installed but I couldn't do it even in VM..

[alpenwasser]

UPDATE 2:

 

Graduated from playing in VMs to playing with the real hardware. Bumped into quite a few problems which I will list out here.

 

1. I will get ZFS module not found error everytime there is a kernel update. So each time I have to do

Hm, interesting. In Arch linux there's an unoffical repo you can add to the package

manager and then it's all done automatically.

[N7_Zer0]

Yes the hypervisor itself is free, but I think the controlling software that is installed on the administration PC needs a license?

 

Also I didn't have problem accessing the share itself, but the folders in the shares is problematic. They are sometimes buggy.

 

Plex would be a pain in the neck to install as there are just so much that has to work together. I am trying to get Emit installed but I couldn't do it even in VM..

 

vSphere Client and ESXi Hyphervisor are free. Only ESXi Host and vCenter need to be licensed but you won't need those for home use.

 

Can you elaborate on the problem you're having with the folders and what permissions are currently set for the main folder? (run "ls -al" in the terminal)

 

Plex is super easy to install, I have it working in VMware player which is streaming videos to my other machines. I just followed the Ubuntu guide here: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Downloads#Ubuntu_-_PMS

[Huntsman]

vSphere Client and ESXi Hyphervisor are free. Only ESXi Host and vCenter need to be licensed but you won't need those for home use.

 

Can you elaborate on the problem you're having with the folders and what permissions are currently set for the main folder? (run "ls -al" in the terminal)

 

Plex is super easy to install, I have it working in VMware player which is streaming videos to my other machines. I just followed the Ubuntu guide here: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Downloads#Ubuntu_-_PMS

 

Oh, did more googling and confirmed your points about the hypervisor. My bad... sorry...

 

The problem I had with the shares is that they sometimes do not show up when I do smb:ip-address in Ubuntu's Nautilus. When they do show up, oh man are they slow... Also, there was this problem where I have shared the zfs pool(pool name is zpool1) in smb.conf via path=/zpool1 but Ubuntu treats /zpool1 as a local directory instead as a "shortcut" to the actual zpool. Hence when I copy some files into the share, it reports that the capacity of the share is not large enough(it reports the size of my boot drive instead). Hope that is clear enough...

 

And my finals are OVERR!!! LOL... so im back to trying to build this. Thanks for the advice so far guys!

[Priller]

Oops.

[Huntsman]

UPDATE 3:

 

 

1. The samba problem has fixed itself. All I did was reinstall and re-configure lol.. Don't really know what's wrong with it. 

 

2. Apparently raidz1 does not like even number of drives. When I have 4 drives in the zpool, the transfer performance is just horrible. The speed would just stutter from time to time. File transfers would suddenly freeze for a minute, then continue only to freeze again a few minutes later. Plus, the speeds aren't great at all. Although it is alot of small files, the speed were only at 8MBps or so... coupled with the stuttering.. not a great performance. Improved WAAY lot after I redo the zpool with 3 drives only. 

 

3. Found out a great way to monitor the machine's temperature, fan speed and voltages from the command line or ssh. http://poundcomment.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/ubuntu-cpu-temperature-terminal-prompt/

 

 

That's all for this update. Am currently transferring the backups from my old server to the new one. After that I would be installing stuffs like Transmission, media server, web server and maybe virtual hosts.

[Huntsman]

UPDATE 4:

 

 

1. Samba problem again. It wouldn't show up in Windows. In Ubuntu(which is where I am working from) has no problem at all. I have a windows 7 HTPC which need to have access to the files stored onboard so samba is essential. Plus there will be smartphone and other device accessing it so yea, I need samba. Here's my configuration in etc/samba/smb.conf. I know it's very minimal but I only need the share to be accessible to absolutely anyone in my network.

 

 

[global]

workgroup = WORKGROUP

netbios = WORKGROUP

security = share

[share]

path = /tank

comment = Main directory

read only = no

guest ok = yes

writable = yes

create mask = 0775

 

Samba is just SO buggy at this moment that sometimes when I go to in Ubuntu via Nautilus, it would sometimes open my text editor and throw me an error warning. I have no idea what to do right now. 

 

2. Transmission has tons of permission problem. I've installed it from the transmissionbt repository and it had worked fine in VM. Well, everything worked well in the VM till I actually put them here in the actual system. In Transmission's case, I got everything set up and the webGUI up and running. Directories are all pointing at the right places and all the permission and users and groups done. The problem is that once I start to add torrents to start torrenting, it would say that I don't have permission to the file that it is torrenting. -facepalm- It would actually start torrenting for awhile then throws up the error. Tried re-doing it several times but yet nothing works. Oh and btw you HAVE to turn off transmission-daemon before you do any changes else it would revert to the old changes when you restart the service. Which is IMMENSELY annoying. 

 

3. The good news is, virtual machine installation is successful. I will post up the link and tutorials on how to do it since the ones that is available is very outdated. I have installed Windows 7 and Xubuntu on it. Windows is for Emit and No-IP's client. Xubuntu I've planned to use for experiments. The problem though is that ZFS uses up A LOT of RAM. Out of the 6GB that I have in the system ZFS took 4.5GB which doesn't leave much space for VMs. So, might attempt to upgrade the RAM but DDR2s are almost extinct now and those computer shops here that sells them sells them even more expensive than DDR3.

 

4. Emit on the other hand. As I've said, got it up and running in Windows VM. The performance however, is nothing to call home about. It is just barely able to transcode a 1080p movie for an iphone 3Gs(my phone is wreck, this is my sis's). It would sometime stutter but otherwise it is alright.

 

 

I'm starting to get very very frustrated with this project. If I could at least just get samba running, it would be great. Because a NAS is of no good if it can't even share out the files it is hosting. I know I could have taken the easy route by going with something like FreeNAS or back to NAS4Free but I am trying to learn Linux. But if this project is really not feasible, I might switch to FreeNAS. We'll see. I still have another project which is pfsense router/firewall but I don't want to do it midway of this project to eliminate the risk of one interfering with one another. Ideally though, I would like to have everything in their own machine. NAS in one machine, server in another etc but for now, I do not have the kind of money nor the equipment to do so. I am hunting for old servers though. Ebay is not an option since the shipping to my country would cost a bomb. So I have to just work with what I have for the moment. 

 

So, that's about it for this time. Anyone out there who has some knowledge in this please advice?

[N7_Zer0]

Make sure the WORKGROUP name in the smb.conf is the same as the one in Windows. I believe "security = share" isn't really used anymore. All the guides I've seen use "security = user".

 

Add the following to the share config:

guest only = yes

browseable = yes

 

The share folder needs to be owned by "nobody":

sudo chown nobody.nogroup /tank

 

 Remember to run this after you make any changes:

sudo smbd restart

sudo nmbd restart

[Huntsman]

I've tried everything you suggested. I have already did most of them previously though. No change, Still can't see the shares in Windows. Works fine in Ubuntu. Also, security-user will need extra settings I assume?

[alpenwasser]

Ah yes, the eternal bane of our existence that is SAMBA.

I got so annoyed with it that I use SSHFS at the moment, works like a dream on Linux

(the Windows client is still slightly buggy at this time, but it works well enough

for my purposes). However, it's not a 1:1 replacement, there are some restrictions

(I think it's not well suited to situations where multiple users might try to write

to the same file simultaneously).

As a temporary solution, how about setting up an FTP server on the file server and

then mounting that as a normal drive in Windows? I've never done it, but a quick

Google search leads me to believe that this should be possible? I'm not sure if there

might be similar restrictions with regards to simultaneous writes as in SSHFS, but

maybe that's not an issue for you (and you could always try to get SAMBA to work

later on).

Or, alternatively, maybe NFS could work? Although that can be even more annoying

to configure than SAMBA, so maybe don't put that at the top of your list.

As for ZFS: Yes, it will take up more or less as much memory as you throw at it.

I once came across an article which explained why, but I can't recall where that

was at the moment.

[Eric1024]

Or, alternatively, maybe NFS could work? 

 

As someone who's currently doing a small research project on NFS:\

 

yes yes yes yes yes.

 

Use NFSv3 if you want to get everything setup easily, and use NFSv4.1 if you want maximum security, but v4.1 setup is a lot more advanced (requires you set up an authentication server)

[Huntsman]

UPDATE 5:

 

1. Got samba to work. To be honest, I did absolutely nothing LOL! I just left it there after the last post with the still-unable-to-detect-in-windows state and went to sleep. The next morning, I was feeling lucky and went to try it again. Well, what dya know? It showed right up in the Network tab in windows. LOL! I don't know what happened over the night but it worked! Maybe the network needs time to refresh itself? Or was it a router issue? LOL! 

 

2. Found a way to limit the RAM used by ZFS. It seemed that ZFS upon install will configure itself to eat up 80% of your total system RAM since it is designed to be the only one operating in a system. To change the amount of RAM it consumes, create a file in /etc/modprobe.d/zfs.conf and add the following lines:

 

#Min 2048MB / Max 4096MB Limt

options zfs zfs_arc_min=2147483648

options zfs zfs_arc_max=4294967296

 

Just so you know, I haven't tested this out yet since there is no advantage for me to try this. My processor is too weak to handle Emit which I mainly wanted to run in my VM so I'm not going to need this nor the VM. 

 

 

So, that's all for the update. Very pleased that samba is finally working. Performance is very nice as I can get about 40MBps write out of it(yes, it is not THAT great but good enough for me.) 1080p movie playback is very smooth in XBMC and I can skip and fast forward through the scenes smoothly without buffer and stuff. Overall, I am very satisfied with this project so far. The only thing left to finish is to get Transmission working.

 

As for the OwnCloud and VM hosting, those will have to be in a seperate box since the box I am currently using will not have enough CPu to run them. 

[Huntsman]

Ah yes, the eternal bane of our existence that is SAMBA.

I got so annoyed with it that I use SSHFS at the moment, works like a dream on Linux

(the Windows client is still slightly buggy at this time, but it works well enough

for my purposes). However, it's not a 1:1 replacement, there are some restrictions

(I think it's not well suited to situations where multiple users might try to write

to the same file simultaneously).

As a temporary solution, how about setting up an FTP server on the file server and

then mounting that as a normal drive in Windows? I've never done it, but a quick

Google search leads me to believe that this should be possible? I'm not sure if there

might be similar restrictions with regards to simultaneous writes as in SSHFS, but

maybe that's not an issue for you (and you could always try to get SAMBA to work

later on).

Or, alternatively, maybe NFS could work? Although that can be even more annoying

to configure than SAMBA, so maybe don't put that at the top of your list.

As for ZFS: Yes, it will take up more or less as much memory as you throw at it.

I once came across an article which explained why, but I can't recall where that

was at the moment.

 

LOL agree... samba is just so buggy and flimsy. Too bad I have to use it for windoze machines in my house. FTP might be a good idea, will look into it further later on.

 

 

As someone who's currently doing a small research project on NFS:\

 

yes yes yes yes yes.

 

Use NFSv3 if you want to get everything setup easily, and use NFSv4.1 if you want maximum security, but v4.1 setup is a lot more advanced (requires you set up an authentication server)

 

I've looked into setting up NFS and it scares the hell outta me. Everything looked so alien lol.. Nevertheless, I will look into it more once I get this project done.

[alpenwasser]

UPDATE 5:

 

1. Got samba to work. To be honest, I did absolutely nothing LOL!

Yeah, sounds like SAMBA... :lol:

 

2. Found a way to limit the RAM used by ZFS. It seemed that ZFS upon install will configure itself to eat up 80% of your total system RAM since it is designed to be the only one operating in a system. To change the amount of RAM it consumes, create a file in /etc/modprobe.d/zfs.conf and add the following lines:

Huh, I might have to test that out myself.

 

LOL agree... samba is just so buggy and flimsy. Too bad I have to use it for windoze machines in my house. FTP might be a good idea, will look into it further later on.

Yeah, I'm really not fond of Samba, it's just been too unreliable for me (maybe

I'm just too dumb to configure it properly, but then again it really shouldn't

be this difficult, that's just ridiculous).

 

I've looked into setting up NFS and it scares the hell outta me. Everything looked so alien lol.. Nevertheless, I will look into it more once I get this project done.

I've dabbled around with NFS a bit, but never could get it to work. Might try again

when my network is finished.

[Eric1024]

Setting up NFS v3 is supposed to be very very simple, but admittedly I have not had any time to actually play with it because of school issues, but I'm going home in 2 days and then I'll have over a month off to fiddle with it.

 

I'll probably write an in depth tutorial on it when I'm done.

[Huntsman]

Setting up NFS v3 is supposed to be very very simple, but admittedly I have not had any time to actually play with it because of school issues, but I'm going home in 2 days and then I'll have over a month off to fiddle with it.

 

I'll probably write an in depth tutorial on it when I'm done.

 

Okay, I really need a simple way to do this. Guides I've found have too much to tinker with to get it working. It would be good to have something with minimal transfer overhead, that could speed things up alot. 

 

 

So, current status is that I've got everything up and working. Except for personal cloud storage, Emit streaming service and Transmission(couldn't get it working no matter what I do, permission problem). Cloud storage part is not done because I am not going to use it THAT much to warrant the trouble of getting it running in a PC that I honestly just want it to be a NAS. Other features are a bonus. So in a way, it is actually better if I straight off installed FreeNAS into it and be gone with it. But it has been a good journey of learning nevertheless. I will still try to get Transmission going, the rest of it I might try after I have more time.

 

Thanks to everyone that has contributed to the project. Any help is help so I do feel grateful for it. The question now is, should I post up a guide or is this too basic and easy to warrant a guide?

[Huntsman]

Next project will be on a pfsense box. I actually spent abit of spare time to have it built and installed. It is now running in my old "NAS". I've installed pfblocking, snort, squid and havp. Though I've only activated havp and snort, the RAM usage is already at 80% and internet would be stutter. It would have bursts of speed and slow delays in between. Watching youtube is a horrible experience and some sites would fail to load at all. So, next plan is to custom build a pfsense box. Am already starting to plan for it, so might post up a log like this soon. 

[N7_Zer0]

Next project will be on a pfsense box. I actually spent abit of spare time to have it built and installed. It is now running in my old "NAS". I've installed pfblocking, snort, squid and havp. Though I've only activated havp and snort, the RAM usage is already at 80% and internet would be stutter. It would have bursts of speed and slow delays in between. Watching youtube is a horrible experience and some sites would fail to load at all. So, next plan is to custom build a pfsense box. Am already starting to plan for it, so might post up a log like this soon. 

 

Built my pfSense with an Intel Atom D2500CC and 4GB of RAM, no slowdowns whatsoever (draws 15W max at the wall). I used a Supermicro board at first but had to get rid of it, was getting loud buzzing sounds. It was a fun project and the router is better than any consumer one you can buy off the shelf.

 

Pics in my sig.

[Huntsman]

Built my pfSense with an Intel Atom D2500CC and 4GB of RAM, no slowdowns whatsoever (draws 15W max at the wall). I used a Supermicro board at first but had to get rid of it, was getting loud buzzing sounds. It was a fun project and the router is better than any consumer one you can buy off the shelf.

 

Pics in my sig.

 

Built mine using same processor but different board. It still doesn't have a casing since I am planning to build one from scratch. Currently running snort on it. Didn't bother with squid since I don't see the benefit of caching webpages when I don't always go to the same site. Youtube would need large amount of RAM if I want to do that.