I have been working so much lately I haven’t had a chance to write…

I recently acquired another server (bargain basement dual PIII 600Mhz with a GB of RAM). I was thinking of making this into a NAS (Network Attached Storage, for the unitiatied) but I can’t really find a good NAS package. I did run into one, called NASLite, but it had a couple dealbreakers; it didn’t work across a routed network (you couldn’t specify an IP gateway in the configuration) and there was zero security, so it couldn’t integrate into my LDAP system for user authentication… basically, it was like having a wide-open system with zero permissions.

So, now I am looking for a way to build one on Fedora… it looks like I am going to end up with something along a specialized file-server running Webmin for the admin side of things tho, because I can’t seem to find anything really useful that automates the setup and management of the disks and/or partitions, shares, or other file-system activities.

I half-expected that I wasn’t the first person who has tried this, and that there’d be some info on the web, but other than IBM’s “Storage-Tank” efforts, which they immediately ported into their NAS product, I can’t really find anything.

More later…