in need of a light weight linux file server

desmond achu

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I am running a small hotspot and wish to attach a file server to it to share movies and music. i have a very old pc that can only handle somewhere around 64mb of ram. please i will appreciate any help. this pc is an hp forn -thin03 t5520. THANKS
 


Hi @desmond achu, and welcome! Making a usable system with only 64MB of RAM is a challenge. There are some Linux distros that can do this, but I don't know if you'll be successful in making it a media server. Maybe.

The thing to do first is to get a working Linux. Your computer needs a working CD drive to install Linux. With some of the smaller Linux distros, they will still fit on a CD. But if you want to try something larger, you'll need a special boot manager called PLOP to be put on CD so that it can boot up a larger USB flash drive. Hmm, I'd better ask that too: do you have USB ports? I would guess that yes, you have USB, but I'm fairly sure that you cannot boot the computer on USB.

Some possible Linux distros that you might want to read up on and see if you think they will work are (any of these may be somewhat out of date) :

Tiny Core Linux: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/
Damn Small Linux: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
Puppy Linux: http://puppylinux.org/

There may be a few more distros, especially if you are willing to run your server from a CLI (command line interface) only instead of a GUI (graphical user interface). Working from the command line can be hard if you're new to Linux, but this is very common for servers.

Another option for you, maybe, is to purchase a Raspberry Pi computer to use as a media server. These small single board computers only cost about $35 (USD) and have 1 GB of RAM, built-in WiFi, and gigabit ethernet capable. The operating system runs on a SD card so they do not have built-in storage. You would need some kind of external media storage, and at least to set it up you would need a monitor, mouse and keyboard, but those could be removed again when it's up and running. Wikipedia describes the Raspberry Pi here. And you can learn more about using the Pi as a media server here, here, and here.

Cheers
 


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