> i have also installed 2 x 250GB hard
> drives in Master / Slave configuration
Are these IDE drives? You'll probably want to have one on each IDE cable
for a production system.
> 1. to have the 2 x drives running a RAID 1 set up
Trivial.
> 2. to use the Linux server to authenticate access to and from the LAN and
> WAN - basically a Firewall
You're going to have to define "authenticate" a bit better - do you want
your users to have to log in to the firewall to get access, for example?
> 3. To be able to access the server from my holidays and travels
There are a number of ways to do this; do you just want access to your
photos, do you want a photo stash (when the camera gets full), or do you
want full administrative access? None of this is difficult, but an idea of
the target would make life easier :-)
> 4. To be able to host a small non commercial family web site and blog +
> accept pictures that we want to show friend and family
That just comes down to choosing what you want to run (i.e. what it lokos
like).
> plus i would like to
> be able to use my mobile windows PDA, take a photo and then enter the home
> LAN via WIFI router and upload photos to family web page, and do the same
> when on my travels.
Does your PDA support DAV? That's a really good way of uploadnig data (can
be secure).
> 5. To access the network in the home using windows or mac via Cable of
> WIFI
What do you own in the way of wireless kit?
> 7. When i do access, to have a GUI GNOME or KDI installed so i dont have
> to learn Linux scripts
GNOME and KDE would be an expensive choice for this box - particularly as
you only have 384MB. Both of these are memory-hungry, and your machine
will swap heavily if you actually do anything with it (i.e. it wil be
slow).
A web-based interface is generally much more lightweight - my preference
is always Webmin.
> 8. To map drive space so i can use this to protect my PC based work files
> and to have a partition for each member of the family for their needs
Do you want to enforce quotas?
Everything you've talked about here is fairly simple. I'll do it for you
if no-one else volunteers - but I'm extremely busy at present, so it won't
happen for a few weeks at least...
Vic.
