creating personal file server

[falcon240sx]

I want to create a my own personal server that i can ssh into. i want to use the server to store my personal media that i can remotely access from any internet connection.
how do i set this up and how do i find the information to allow me to use ssh?

[stratman4300]

Re: creating personal file server

this really isn't very hard to do and it works quite well.... the way i set mine up is i installed samba, and installed webmin from www.webmin.com. this makes it quite easy to setup your samba shares and give them proper security. (you dont' really need samba. it's just nice for on site network browsing)

If you have a dynamic address provided for you by your isp your going to need some sort of Dynamic DNS service. You can get a free account here www.no-ip.org, also you'll need to run the no-ip updater on your file server..... it should be in the repositories. After that is setup you'll have to configure your router to forward port 22 to the IP address of your file server.

one problem i saw with this is when you ssh into the box..... by default it directs you to the signed in users home directory. my work around for this was the symlink that users home directory to the directory of my file shares.

anyway that should about do it.

[spotslayer]

Re: creating personal file server

falcon240sx search around for ubuntu LAMP server. There is some good info in the ubuntu wiki concerning install. There is a good streaming media server in the repositories gnump3d that will stream mp3 and videos.

Have lots of fun

David

[falcon240sx]

Re: creating personal file server

i have most of what stratman4300 said done. i'm stuck at forwarding the port. No one in my family can remember the login username and password to get into the router. i could reset the router, but it took my mom hours to get our wireless connection and print server to work. so until i find a way to get in, im stuck

[stratman4300]

Re: creating personal file server

hmmm pretty tough to help with that...

If you do a google search for your router model number and brand you may be able to find the default admin password or something along those lines...

still you may have to end up re-setting it.

[falcon240sx]

Re: creating personal file server

what application is requiring that i forward port 22? and how do i find my ip address?

[stratman4300]

Re: creating personal file server

first off, to find your IP address you simply open a command line and type

ifconfig

You'll get something like this.

stratman4300@NX6325-AJS:~$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:17:08:45:01:4C
inet addr:192.168.1.61 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::217:8ff:fe45:14c/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:503 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:457 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:481268 (469.9 KiB) TX bytes:46593 (45.5 KiB)
Interrupt:23

the inet addr is your ip address.

To answer your question about port 22. SSH runs on port 22, thus to access it from anywhere in the world you would have to have your router forward any requests for port 22 to whatever IP address your file server has.

will you be accessing your files remotely from a windows machine or linux machine

[falcon240sx]

Re: creating personal file server

will you be accessing your files remotely from a windows machine or linux machine

I will be using my MacBook

I was able to ssh into it when i used accountname@ipaddress, but not when i used the no-ip.biz

[stratman4300]

Re: creating personal file server

do you have the no-ip updater running on your server it's the client side chunk that updates your current IP address to no-ip.org

[falcon240sx]

Re: creating personal file server

that worked
do i have to run it everytime i start up?

[stratman4300]

Re: creating personal file server

yes it needs to be running at all times. you could just manually start it every time you reboot your file server, but it's nice to have it come up by itself . I forget off the top of my head exactly how to tell no-ip updater to run at start-up in a non-gui environment. A quick google search could probably tell you.

Anyone else on the board know how to do this

[falcon240sx]

Re: creating personal file server

in the README it has a script, but i do not understand the directions

[adamsjw2]

Re: creating personal file server

falcon 240sx,
I setup a home file server with Ubuntu Server Edition, extremely easy to access and maintain. There's no need to install Samba, if you're not going to need to access from Windows. You can lock it down be tweaking the sshd.conf file. Use putty to do ssh in terminal mode (I use it to check logs, run apt-get) and sshfs to transfer files in Konqueror http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html.
JA

[falcon240sx]

Re: creating personal file server

it works right now, its just when my ip address changes because it is dynamic, i will have to run it again.

[adamsjw2]

Re: creating personal file server

falcon,
Most routers that serve up DHCP ips also allow individual work stations to have a static ip, as long it is in the same subnet/ip range. My file server is the only one of four computers that has a static ip.
Jim