I looked at servers and they basically look like computers, but with more space for hard drives.
Questions:
What is the difference between [distro] and [distro] Server?
Can I use GUI like on normal computer to configure stuff?
How do I make it home server/hidden service/seedbox? Briefly, no need to get in details.
If I configure to only allow Tor connections then I'm safe?
What are some interesting uses in home other than what I mentioned?
I know this sounds stupid, but I genuinely don't know.
>>4925 I presume you are talking about linux distros with a word "server" in them, not about hardware servers, right?
Usually they are the same distros, based on some LTS release, but without GUI and less preinstalled packages. You can install them on your regular PC and with some addition apt-gets use it like a regular linux distro, nothing special.
If you are talking about hardware, then it is bit different than your regular PC: you get support for more exotic CPUs, you can install lots of RAM, HDDs, ethernets, 2 PSUs etc. Besides you get a remote control console, that is like a small computer in a computer hosting a webpage via which you can power on/off and control you server.
I wouldn't recommend you buying one for home use, because they are loud. Like a jet plane, especially if you open the case.
PS. I've never used "server" distro for my servers, jus old plain edgy arch. Even for production lol :D
Similar experience to >>4937 Some distributions have "server" releases, but they seem superfluous since it's just a minimal install, plus some non-GUI packages to provide services. It should all be done in the installer.
If you use a GUI, it should be on your (physical/virtual) workstation. You really should not be putting anything on a server than the bare minimum to accomplish the task at hand.
Only Reddit-tier retards install a window system on their servers and use it to browse the web. You'd be surprised how many retards do this (although usually in Windows).
You are correct. Servers are no different than regular computers other than typically using higher quality parts and being sized to fit in a certain amount of units to fit in a server racks.
>What is the difference between [distro] and [distro] Server?
The server version is more minimal. There is no GUI and it removes a lot of programs you would not need for a server.
>Can I use GUI like on normal computer to configure stuff?
Technically yes. This approach is much more common in Windows' server operating systems. Practically no one administers any other operating system with a GUI.
>How do I make it home server/hidden service/seedbox? Briefly, no need to get in details.
Typically all you need to do is install the program and then configure it.
>If I configure to only allow Tor connections then I'm safe?
Not necessarily. The big thing to security is using a ssh key instead of a regular password for authentication. Putting services on Tor makes it so people have to no the onion to be able to connect instead of brute forcing through the ipv4 space or going through a subsets of ipv6.
>>4937 >>4940 >>4941 Thanks for clarification anons. I use GNU/Linux for some time but thought of configuring server using only command line is a daunting task for me. I like to have everything under control like on my desktop. I'm not planning on hosting anything but if I ever did I would meeat many obstacles.
>Only Reddit-tier retards install a window system on their servers and use it to browse the web
I despise everything Reddit-tier retards do but thought of being one drives me crazy.
Other difference on the hardware side is ECC memory.
If you want to do a home server, you could use a APU2 from PCEngines. It's cheap, light and powerful enough for most tasks.
Some software to host:
- NextCloud
- Invidious/PeerTube instance
- Searx instance
- Wikipedia copy in a local httpd (to waste less bandwidth)
- Torrent downloading with aria2
- Your own email using OpenSMTPD
>>4943 I'd recommend using an old laptop or rp pi to start with. make small steps;
Install a distro you know and learn to use ssh. Use torrent software/transmission-cli to create your seedbox. After reading guides and learning basic skills all that's left is slowly understanding networking. As >>4946 pointed out, plenty of programs to learn and install. you'll learn alot from them. Despite what most guides might tell you, ECC is NOT important. most software can catch corrupted data using hashes so single bit errors are trivial to filter out and RAM is not the only component that can spit out bad data.
>>5027 >most software can catch corrupted data
Can you name the software you are thinking of? I would say over 99% of software does not catch corrupted data. I can not even think of a piece of software off my head that even detects RAM corruption let alone correct it.
>>5029 ext4, firefox/browsers, all torrent software. upon (re)starting a torrent it will hash the file before announcing and uploading parts. You are right that most of this stuff is being delegated to other parts of the system which may or may not make general assumptions about data integrity.
(non-ECC) RAM still has hidden data integrity structures. errors in ram are rare so its not checked against but everything eventually has to be flushed to disk. Then it eventually gets detected.
>ext4
>firefox/browsers
>torrent software
Do you have any evidence to back this up. Remember that we are not talking about corruptions that happen on nonvolatile storage and that we are not talking about corruptions that happen during download. As far as I know those pieces of software do not handle RAM corruptions. I have even had firefox crash on me due to corruptions in RAM.
>>5032 what exactly do you want me to say? Corruption is 'mostly' being caught by checksumming at critical levels. If you want to be pedantic then the uncertainty principle means you can never establish a TCP connection.
- A sends a packet to B
- B sends confirmation back to A
- A knows for 'certain' that packet 1 has been received.
- B cannot be certain that A has received this confirmation thus A should send confirmation back.
- A sends this confirmation but now has no way of knowing wether B has received it.
This game can go on forever but in data science we assume that one or two confirmations are enough. Same with data integrity. Computers have FEC in data buses and checksumming/ECC in the FS. How do we know that the data send trough the bus is the same as the data in the FS? Do another checksum? once loaded in CPU cache, executed and written back, how do we know it wasn't altered during the calculation and written back incorrectly? do ECC calculations? another checksum? how can you prove the checksum wasn't altered in an error making you the multiversal lottery winner?
If you WANT to catch corruption in RAM then you should buy (ECC) RAM that does that. for most users it doesn't matter because almost nothing can break the system or write back unsanitised data.
RAM is pretty consistent even in errors. If data wasn't altered then a bit flip wouldn't cause a writeback which means you're not as likely of catching mem corruption as you think. If your firefox crashes then you can do a memtest and blacklist the faulty regions from being allocated by the kernel.
Note; ext4 does not support file checksums. Only metadata. btrfs is what supports this.
Bear with me...
I looked at servers and they basically look like computers, but with more space for hard drives.
Questions:
What is the difference between [distro] and [distro] Server?
Can I use GUI like on normal computer to configure stuff?
How do I make it home server/hidden service/seedbox? Briefly, no need to get in details.
If I configure to only allow Tor connections then I'm safe?
What are some interesting uses in home other than what I mentioned?
I know this sounds stupid, but I genuinely don't know.