At home I've a fileserver PC and Ubuntu clients including one that's
ended up needing to be left on 24/7. I'm thinking of moving the
server's 2 disks to the always-on desktop box to save electricity. All
PCs are on a wifi ADSL router using Cat5 and WPA, and we've an
(untrusted) lodger. Backups are nightly between encrypted server disks,
and approx weekly an incremental to an unencrypted USB drive which is
locked away. [*]
Have I thought of all the pros and cons, and how should I secure this
arrangement (especially NFS)?
Power: saves 25%
same disk count, one less mobo
LAN security: no change - is it enough?
client login passwords; static client IPs;
NFS exports to individual IPs;
encrypted data disks; ssh with passwords
Physical security: worse.
fileserver is in the loft,
PC and router are on the desk
Noise: OK
desktop gets 3 quiet Barracuda disks
Speed: got a PCI-IDE card
so each disk can be on its own channel
Future expansion: costly
will need to replace with larger disks.
2 channel PCI card => only add 1 more disk
Stability: not sure.
The 24/7 desktop has mostly run between power cuts so far. Apps are
installed as needed mostly from universe and there's a spare PC for
reboots e.g. learning grub2. Browser memory leaks eventually fill
swap and fell the box: the browser could be run in a VM to avoid
this.
Bring on the advice please!
Anthony
* story in a nutshell; some features not yet implemented quite like
that.
