by > > My plan is to stick a couple of hard disks full of my audio library in to
> > a little Pentium box and have it probe around for Windows and Macintosh
> > computers on a TCP/IP network and hook itself up as a password protected
> > fileserver.
> > I'm no total beginner, but I'm certain somebody has already built these
> > kinds of servers, so if anyone could provide information or pointers
> > towards this, I'd keep everyone posted on my success or failure here.
> > On a note, I know I'll probably use Netatalk and Samba and I got both
> > recent packages and a little Linux distro(a RedHat7 in fact) and the
> > distro is running fine on a set-aside partition(plus boot and swap). I'll
> > test any setups I come up with on a G4 Mac and Win2000 machines of
> > friends.
> Just try it, it's not rocket science, you need to read the netatalk HOWTOs,
> O'Reilly have put out copies of 'Samba' book, as Open Source, so you should
> find that somewhere. A magazine I subscribe to, included it on their cover
> disk.
With the help of Webmin or the like I might even try to remote admin the fileserver
where ever I take it.
Here's the purpose of this machine.
I'm a professional audio engineer with a long history of using computers for
sound stuff, starting with trackers, midi sequencing, sampling amongst many things.
Sooner or later I will work in other places than I do now, doing post production on
a multitude of things, ranging from simple "Yeah we don't have a gunshot yet" to
"We need a dozen new ambiences for this episode, foley sweeteners and loads of special
effects".
Most sound designers(which all engineers are to a degree btw) have their own sound library
that they recorded or produced themselves.
On the job you'd like to have that stuff ready at hand. Everyone's like Larry Wall this way. Lazy.
So my goal is to have my complete library on inexpensive hard disks. These should be IDE drives.
The machines I will hook up to will probably be running, MacOS 9(& X in a year or two), Win2000
and Win98SE.
So that plan, and that's what this is, would be to take a computer that can have two HDs(os+lib and lib),
a network card(10/100 MBit Realtek 8139 would suffice), a cheap gfx card(got an old 2MB mystique),
probably an IDE controller that can deal with the new harddisks,
stick this stuff in to a desktop or equally small case and put this sucker in to flight case.
I wann hook it up to the network there, which all MacOS machines are equiped with anyway nowadays,
and have my library at my fingertips so to speak.
It would speed up work and take at least 0.5 load off my central nervous system, because I wouldn't
have to deal with inadequate search systems, CD libraries and other workflow coffin nails I frequently encounter.
My library isn't that large yet. So this project is an effort to develop a solution before the problem becomes
a reality.
I realise I haven't read all the docs I need to.Quote:> My main issue with netatalk (I did it with RH-6.2 and needed to compile up
> the asun version), was not wanting password administration overhead.
> With Samba, it could just use the configured domain controllers for SMB
> shares.
> You may find PAM useful, there are modules to fetch passwords from LDAP and
> Databases.
Yeah, that was my idea too. Automatic retrieval of network info upon startup.Quote:> You can scan for open ports with security tools, to find the servers eg)
> things like nmap.
> I'm not sure really what you said makes sense, as if the files are on the
> portable pentium, then the Win and Mac clients will just be able to see it,
> when it's added into their network.
> Use DHCP client to get your IP settings, or reset them statically when you
> move networks.
This is going to be a lot of interesting and rewarding work.
Thanks. If you have more ideas on this, tips or pointers, please email me if possible in addition
to posting here, since I'm not a daily usenet hound anymore. Not for around seven years anyway.
Take care
Tony