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The Freeware Files: Make the Most of your Spare Storage with Five Freeware Servers!

David Murphy — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:30:00 -0500

So here's the deal. You have a ton of extra storage sitting around your house/apartment/basement. That's great. So what's the problem? It's just sitting there, doing you absolutely no good. You've maxed out the SATA ports on your desktop rig, but would love for a way to make use of your hard drives in some manner that's geekier than a doorstop, a height extension for your coffee table, or a crude weapon.

Have you thought about building your own server?

Woah, woah. Don't skip over this article just yet. It sounds complicated, but crafting up your own personal server for your files (and multimedia) isn't that complicated. In fact, for some of the free solutions I'm about to show you, all you need is a working PC that accepts USB keys. That's it. Plug it in, fire up the software, and you'll have a brand-new storage array that's ready to receive your file backups and music files in equal measure. And why is that important? Because you're probably not running a RAID array on your main PC--if your primary drive goes, that's it. Game over. End of story. And if you're the most backup-conscious person around, wouldn't it be nice to have a low-powered PC that serves up multimedia for any networked computer in your abode? I thought so.

unRAID Server

What it does: Boot this free server from a flash drive and you'll be ready to tap into the power of RAID-based redundancy for your files in no time. Unlike a traditional RAID-based NAS, the proprietary technology found in unRAID allows for multiple drive failures without a catastrophic loss of data. Sure, you'll lose whatever files happened to be on said dead drives, but you won't lose an entire array's worth of material as if you just watched two drives in your RAID 5 array disintegrate. Although unRAID is Linux-based, you can access its configuration screens via a standard Web browser. Take that, complexity.

Download it here!

FreeNAS

What it does: The ever-tiny FreeNAS requires few resources to operate: 128MB of RAM and at least 32MB of free storage space on any number of potential candidates, including USB keys, CDs, and other forms of portable storage (CF cards, anyone?) But that's not to say that FreeNAS is light on its features to match. RAID functionality, Web-based file management, iTunes server support, and an integrated BitTorrent client are among some of the unique applications you'll find on this lightweight server software. Heck, you can even encrypt your drives as well--an ideal solution if you'll be making heavy use of FreeNAS' torrent features, to say the least...

Download it here!

ClarkConnect

What it does: This kitchen sink of server software blends a large number of services and software applications into its meaty 513MB package. Where to begin? Firewall functionality is included, as is bandwidth management technology and VPN connectivity. You can use ClarkConnect to share contacts, calendars, and tasks--amongst other Outlook and Thunderbird-based features--with all the PCs connected to your network. LAN-based backup is included in the installation, as well as integrated FTP server functionality and user-based file shares. If you're looking for a total-package home server, you'd be wise to consider ClarkConnect. If media-sharing is your only interest, you would be better-served by a simpler server solution.

Download it here!

Amahi Home Server

What it does: This no-fuss home server software is free to operate and only requires that you have a working Fedora 10 operating system prior to installation. The Web site walks you through the brief install process, which then opens up your home network to server-based file hosting, backups, media sharing, and integrated search via your Web browser of choice. On top of that, Amahi's rich community has generated a number of add-ons that extend the power and functionality of this robust server software. Because of these, you can blend BitTorrent downloading, media catalogues, Web-based media streaming, and a sharable recipe book, as well as other features, into your default installation.

Download it here!

Tonido

What it does: Do you want the functionality of a full-fledged home server for your desktop machine, but still want to retain your standard, working operating system for normal use? Check out Tonido. Install this application and you can access a variety of server-themed services from any Web browser on the planet. Share the photographs on your home PC using an easy-to-access Web interface--files too. You can pull up and play your music collection as if you were sitting right in front of your desktop PC, as Tonido eliminates the need to install and configure fancy network tunneling software or VNC connectivity just to access an iTunes share. For the worker bee, Tonido's built-in workspace for note-taking, calendaring, and contact-sharing is ideal for maintaining a central repository of your thoughts. Oh, and the software integrates with Twitter too, just in case you needed to share those 140-character witticisms as well.

Download it here!

How To: Host Your Blog at Home

David Murphy — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 13:38:44 -0600

So you have a blog. Cool, but let’s face it, that’s just not very unique in the modern-day web world. Everyone blogs; heck even your Xbox 360 has its own self-updating blog!

One way to set yourself apart from the hordes, and steer clear of restrictive hosting providers, is to use your own gear to run your own blog. You not only earn more geek street-cred, but self-hosting your blog opens the door to limitless configuration options—whether you’re using Notepad to edit bare-bones HTML documents, or setting up the latest Wordpress plugins.

If you’ve never built your own server, or if you find the concept of an Apache installation terrifying, don’t sweat it. We’re going to help you shortcut the configuration headache, so you don’t have to emo-blog about it later.

1. Getting the Hardware Up-to-Speed
For the backbone of your blog, hardware doesn’t really matter as much as you might think. You can run a web server on an old-school CPU and a craptastic videocard; you can run it on a dual-core rig with SLI graphics. As long as you aren’t planning to use your web server as a gaming rig, you can spend as much or as little on hardware as your bank account permits.

Regardless of the hardware you use, you need to be aware of a few important setup issues. Remember, you’re going to be running a web server; when it’s offline, so is your blog. So while you’ll want to have Windows automatically update and install the latest patches on your box, be sure to set an ideal time. And don’t forget the time-zone issue. If you’re running a blog on the west coast, arbitrarily setting your computer to update at 3 a.m. because it “seems late” could render your blog inaccessible to the east coasters who like a little Web 2.0 with their morning lattes.

It’s important to keep your virus scanner up and running on your web server, but you’re better off scheduling a daily, midnight drive scan, as opposed to kicking on the real-time protection. What you trade away in security, you gain by maximizing your system resources—this is crucial if you’re using a lower-end rig to power your blog, especially if you feel like multitasking the computer as a file dump or video streamer.

2. Opening the Software End
Before you really start tinkering with your machine, you’re going to want to establish a functioning, nonrestricted connection between your server and the Internet. Typically, something’s blocking the path: a software firewall, a home router, or both.

While there are a number of software firewalls you can have on your machine, including the default Windows firewall, the port-opening procedure is similar for all. In Windows’ case, open the firewall control panel and click the Exceptions tab. Click “Add Port” and enter the following: HTTP (80), HTTPS (443), MYSQL (3306).

Now is a good time to get a static IP address for your machine. Without it, your router could reassign a different IP to your server, nullifying the entire point of port forwarding on the router. Click the Start button, then Run, and type in cmd. Hit Enter, which pulls up a command prompt in its own window. Type ipconfig /all, and look for the Local Area Connection section. Write down your IP address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and all the IP addresses under “DNS servers.” Close the window and go to the Control Panel’s Network Connections menu. Right-click Local Area Connection and select Properties. Find the menu option for TCP/IP, select it, and click the Properties button.

You should now see a window that most likely has “Obtain an IP address automatically” selected. Click “Use the following…” for both sections, and begin entering the information you just wrote down. The only change should come in the IP address field, where you’ll want to pick an unlikely number far above your current IP—if the IP you wrote down is 192.168.0.1, for example, enter 192.168.0.250. Fire up your web browser to make sure you can still connect to the net, and you’re good to go.

3. Opening the Hardware Gate
Hardware routers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, default administrative IPs, and port-forwarding configurations. You’ll want to consult your router’s manual as to the specific way to configure your device for port forwarding, but in general, it’s pretty similar to how you set up your software firewall.

You’ll have to enter a particular IP address into your browser to access your router’s configuration screen (usually it’s 192.168.0.1), and somewhere in there will be a menu for port forwarding. Type in the static IP address you just configured for your PC in the Windows network settings (our example was 192.168.0.2), and forward the TCP ports 80, 443, and 3306 to that IP.

Now that you’re done playing with IPs, you should hit up DynDNS and register for its free static DNS service. Download and run the site’s update client, and your DynDNS web address (e.g., example.is-a-chef.org) will always point to the IP address of your router, which will forward the traffic requests right to your web server.

4. The Server Runneth Over
After all that networking configuration, installing the server applications themselves is a piece of cake. In just three clicks of the default Next button, XAMPP will unload the big guns—Apache, MySQL, and PHP—onto your system. While it’s chugging along, go get a drink or something; on an average machine, the installation takes about five minutes or so. Be sure to install the XAMPP components as Windows services when prompted.

Once that’s done, pull up your web browser and point it to http://localhost. Select your language, and you’ll find yourself on the XAMPP main screen. Click Status, and if everything installed correctly, the top five components—at minimum—will be green-lit. Now click the Security link in the left-hand frame, and you’ll find that your XAMPP setup lacks any password-based security whatsoever. Click the link below the table, and you’ll be given the option to password-lock your MySQL root and XAMPP configuration. Double-click the tray icon, restart MySQL, and you’re set.

5. Installing Wordpress
Unzip the Wordpress files to your /htdocs directory, a subset of wherever you installed XAMPP. While that’s happening, fire up the XAMPP main screen in your browser and click phpMyAdmin under the Tools menu. Once you’ve logged in, look for the Create New Database prompt. Then type wordpress, and select “utf8_unicode_ci” instead of “collation.”

Head over to your /htdocs directory, and pull up “wp-config-sample.php” in Wordpad. Type in your MySQL username (root) and password, then save the file and rename it wp-config.php. Go back to http://localhost in your browser, where you’ll get a prompt to auto-install Wordpress. When it finishes, log into your new Wordpress installation and click the Options tab. Under Wordpress Address, type in the URL that you’ll use to access your blog, which is usually the same as your DynDNS Internet address. Most people will put the same info in the Blog Address field as well.

6. Getting Stylish
By now, Wordpress is basically good to go, but you don’t want a default-looking blog; you want a fancy blog. In that case, we recommend you grab K2 (getk2.com), a template that goes on top of your Wordpress installation and adds a bunch of advanced functionality. The easy part comes on the installation side; just unzip the K2 package to your /wp-content/themes/ directory. Point your browser to your Wordpress configuration page (wp-admin), click the Presentation tab, and select K2 as your current theme.

From there, you can hit up the K2 Options Panel to set the theme, or overall look of your blog, and manage the specifics of your blog’s header and sidebar modules. If you’re really adventurous, you can edit your site’s CSS templates directly. But one of the nice things about K2 is that it eliminates the need to get elbow-deep in code, especially when you want to install new K2-compatible plugins. With one quick download and a few clicks of the mouse, you can throw just about any added functionality you want into your blog.