Where do I begin?

Well, last week was no less eventful that the week before it. Taranis - my server - was having some issues and it turns out the OS drive in it went out. This was due to a few reasons. Windows Home server balances storage every60 - 90 mins regularly, and the OS drive was having some write errors which were aggravated by the constant activity. On top of that, I ran some hardware diagnostics and saw the Hard Drive operating temperature was about 120 degrees F. With proper airflow, they should be closer to 90 degrees or less.

Unfortunately, I only had an 80GB hard drive for a replacement. Instead of putting the smaller drive in the server, I replaced my desktop hard drive, then used that drive for the server. I spent alot of time debating whether I wanted to use Linux, or stick with WHS. After hours of backing up my data, I decided to try openSuse.

OpenSuse is great. It's very easy to install and very robust. It has a package manager similar to aptitude on Debian. My plans for the server now are being extended to PDC, File and Printer server, as well as VM host for 1 or 2 virtual machines. When the server is Idle, it uses 244 MB of RAM and 300-400MHz of CPU. I am very very happy with the performance of Novell's Linux Distro.

To find out more about openSuse, you can visit their website at Opensuse Dot Org .

In other news,, not much has been happening. I hope to have some time to put more work into Nanobyte soon, since the server has taken priority. Once I get the server into a functional state once more, I'll have a chance to post a few tutorials based on the new setup - including Bacula, tightvnc, xrdp, samba, ldap and more!