[Cialug] Lots 'o questions....

[David Champion]

I can offer answers on some of these... see replies inline...

-dc

jrnosee at gmail.com wrote:
> I've decided to take on a new endeavor and I'm looking for any 
> thoughts, suggestions, tips, etc. I can get.
>
> I'm going to set up a box running Ubuntu (not sure if it will be 
> server (or server w/ gui) or desktop yet).
>
> This box is going to be 2 things.
>
> 1.) VMware Server
> Currently this runs my NSLU2 "slug" embedded linux development 
> environment.  I may also add a web/email server VM* (see below)
> 2.) Media File and Backup Server
> I'm going to set up a mirrored 500GB raid to hold multi-media files 
> and backup files from my home windows pc's.
>
> The OS will either be on a separate drive, or the same drive as the 
> VM's.  The RAID will be a share as a whole (unless suggested 
> differently).  I want to make as much room available to this share as 
> possible.
>
> My primary questions involve the RAID as I've never set one up 
> before.  There are 2 things I'm hoping the raid can do for me, but I 
> don't know if it can, or how to set it up.
> 1.) Pull 'n go in an emergency.  You know, the house is burning down 
> and I have time to grab...one drive tray from the server.  If I pull 
> out one of the two raid drives and my house goes up in flames, can I 
> just stick the drive in another computer later as a single drive and 
> get my files back?

If it's a RAID mirror then... maybe. Are you planning to use the linux 
software RAID driver? Get familiar with the mdadm commands. If you're 
using a hardware RAID controller, then being able to rebuild your RAID 
sometimes depends on having a compatible controller available.

> 2.) Windows/Linux accessable.  I'm going to be sharing to a Windows 
> PC.  I want the linux OS to be able to read the drive too.  I'm going 
> to have large (4+GB) files on it and I know FAT32 won't go that big.  
> Should #1 happen, I may want to get at these files from a Windows PC.
>

The store's local filesystem format is irrelevant, you only care that 
the network file share is readable... which will probably either be 
Samba or NFS... unless you want to make an iSCSI share or something like 
that. Probably best to use a linux native fs, like ext3.

> My other questions involves Security & VM's.
> 1.) If I open up a VM to the web for webhosting and email, are my 
> other VM's and my host OS still safe from attack?  Sadly for years 
> I've pretty much sat myself behind a router firewall and lived 
> happily...I doubt that'll be enough sooner than later.
>

Yes and no. Using a VM offers other vectors of attack... for instance 
someone has demonstrated reading information directly from the CPU 
buffers between VM's on the same machine.

> Odd question out:
> Going along with #2 from the RAID questions, is there any format I can 
> use on a portable drive that would store large (4+GB) files, and be 
> readable and writable in Linux and Windows?
>

The linux fuseblock driver should be able to read & write NTFS (I've 
been using it without any issues). You can also get linux filesystem 
drivers for ext2 & 3, reiserfs and probably others for Windows. If 
you're worried about being able to plug it into any random Windows box 
and read it, you'll probably want NTFS.

> Thanks,
>
> Justin W. Richeson
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