Mini Home Server Setup – Online Guide or Website?

[JerryZ]

Just purchased the low end Core 2 Mini and wanted to use it as a headless server for a home network. I currently have my video and audio on a drive running off of the Airport Extreme Base Station.

Is there a website or guide for how to specifically configure a home system (services etc…which are necessary and which are not…) ?
I have a copy of “Server Essentials” & “The Little Black Book”.

For instance:
Here is a simple question- I have successfully configured a local dns and can get services running on a local network. If I start over and create my actual home network, should I register and create a domain or can I use anything I’d like for the local dns?”

I’d like to also remotely access my files with a VPN setup.

This may appear elementary, but what are the minimum services required for a home enviornment? A “real world” style guide..

Any ideas or pointers?

[jerkyjerk]

Are you using Mac OS X Server or just plain old Mac OS X? If using Server then there is a [url=http://www.maclive.net/sid/132]VPN server and simple GUI[/url] you can use to get started. looks like a good page Or if you are using regular Mac OS X you could install something like [url=http://www.openvpn.net]OpenVPN[/url]

Technically you can use any domain you’d like internally. The only issue I see is if you use an existing domain. For example you started using something like apple.com internally you would loose access to all apple.com sites because your dns server will never look outside itself for apple.com hosts. If you are going to make things like mail and web services availaible externally will you need to register a real domain. If you are only setting up VPN access you could alwasy just use something like DynDNS for a hostname with one of their free names like .dyndns.org

The minimum services I think a home network could use especially if you are using a dedicated machine is caching DNS, file server and if you have a printer, some way to network it whether its via somthing like a JetDirect or just simply hooked up to your “server” via usb and shared.

jerky

[Magus255]

I have 1 with a similar setup and like jerkyjerk said it depends on what you want to do with it. If you have a server license you will probably want to run dns and maybe dhcp, also some file services. If you don’t have server then you can just let your router do the dns and dhcp like before and setup the simple file sharing in the client version, it will work for most any home setup. As for VPN, do you really need it? If you map ports you can access afp or smb, or you could just use ssh and scp. My setup runs dns, dhcp, afp, and windows sharing on server, but its really a bit of overkill.

[JerryZ]

Thanks for the replys.

I have osx server and would like to use the mini to serve files via Airport or Ethernet. In addition act as a VPN for my portable when I am away.

So, is there a basic home setup tutorial anywhere? Maybe with real life examples of a typical home situation – i.e. master Itunes library, iPhoto library…setup shares….setup VPN for accessing the Internet through yor home server while on the road etc..

Things to consider before committing to a particular configuration…etc.

[jerkyjerk]

I’m not sure what your level of familarity is of OS X Server. Since you are looking to adapt Server to a home environment you probably won’t find too many articles that will give you a hand holding blow by blow play of what you want to do if you don’t have much experience with it. I think I’d be acurate in saying this group, which includes myself, is a small minority that uses Server as a part of their home network. I can require you to use a bit of creativity to combine seemingly dissimlar sources to get this working up to your expectations and would also explain the dearth of articles describing its use in this capacity.

I’ll give you an example:
[b]master iTunes library[/b]

What are your requirements for this? Is is as simple as mine? All our music from our ripped CDs are located on an AFP share on the server. I’m probably 75% complete with the task. All I’ve done is occasionally wacked all the items in my wife’s iTunes library and drag and dropped the shared folder back to iTunes so it picks up any new CDs added to the share. There might be some other better ways to do it but it is simple enough and provides what we wanted if you are looking for something like actually sharing the everything like the iTunes library files you might want to combine the share with the information [url=http://elasticdog.com/2007/04/howto-have-multiple-users-share-an-itunes-library-on-one-machine/]found in this article[/url] IIRC there are some other articles out there that have worked out similar issues with sharing iPhoto libraries. [url=http://macosxhints.com]Mac OS X hints might be helpful on that one[/url] As time goes on I’ll maybe take the time to attempt something like this but for now its been good enough.

I’m not sure if you mistyped it but the VPN won’t really help you to access the internet while on the rode but it will help you access your non-public network services and computers on your home network while on the road. I think that [url=http://www.maclive.net/sid/132]previous link[/url] will get you started with the VPN setup now that I know you are using Server.

If your network is primarily macs you might want to consider setting up Open Directory. I’ve been pretty obsessed with it since Panther trying to make it work with every operating system I can throw at it. Being able to sign on once and access the shares and resources without retyping your password is pretty convenient. There was a good series of articles recently on macdevcenter.com about Open Directory. It was focused on using the non-server Mac OS X as an OD master type setup. Again you can probably shoehorn the information into working with OS X Server.

[jerkyjerk]

here was the iPhoto article I was thinking of http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050904072808460

here’s some other info that might help with iTunes:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=44055
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93195

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