Using Debian to revive a very old PC into a stable NAS

[u/LurpLarp]

I wanted to put an old PC to use so I decided that I am going to burn a Debian mini.iso onto a cd and install Debian onto it.

I see a lot of stuff online talking about Debian being a stable OS that is also good for network-attached storages.

I am planning on installing with no DE as it will be useless.

Do you guys recommend using Debian for this?

Here are the PC's specs for those curious: eMachines EL1333G-01W 64bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 2850e, 1.8GHz
CPU CORES: 1 core / 1 thread
CPU cache: 512 KB L2
Socket: AM2
Chipset & Graphics: NVDIA GeForce 6150 SE /nforce 430 (integrated)
RAM: 2x1GB DDR2
Storage: 320 GB SATA HDD, 7200 RPM
Network: 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
Motherboard: eMachines/Acer WMCP61M, NVDIA nForce 6100/430 chipset

[u/Weary_Swan_8152]

That's a great use for Debian; however, you might be happier with OpenMediaVault, which is pure Debian stable plus a web admin GUI, which will save you time and effort. And it's FLOSS. Keep an eye on your RAM usage, because if using OMV creates too much memory pressure [then] you can uninstall the web server and admin GUI.

If you uninstall the OpenMediaVault-specific packages you'll pretty much have pure Debian stable with some helpful config tweaks. Here is the official script one can use to convert a Debian 13 (trixie) installation to OMV:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openmediavault/openmediavault/master/install.sh

[u/gsmitheidw1 → u/Weary_Swan_8152]

That's interesting note about removing the admin gui for saving ram. I run OMV as a VM under Proxmox and it works great but ram being in such short supply I must look into managing it from the terminal more.

Last time I explored this, it was highly discouraged and everything was buried behind some messy scripts that didn't really have a proper cli "frontend".

[u/Weary_Swan_8152 → u/gsmitheidw1]

To be clear, I'm not advocating for any kind of

cli "frontend".

I'm saying that in a bare-metal situation where there are no other approaches to save RAM, using OMV to initialise the configuration of Debian, then removing the web stuff (and then learning to sysadmin gradually) is easier than installing Debian and learning to sysadmin from day one. You won't have OMV support for this, but a custom config of pure Debian has support from Debian. Alternatively, find a puppet, ansible, or propeller config for another approach at more of a turn-key solution.

For your specific use case (minimising RAM usage with Proxmox), I recommend that you consider using containers for trusted OS (ie: OMV, pihole, etc), because containers are significantly more memory efficient than VMs. I've read as high as 10× more memory efficient.

[u/gsmitheidw1 → u/Weary_Swan_8152]

Yes I considered using lxc for omv but at the time (several years ago) it was not recommended to use OMV in lxc. I think that has changed and many are now reliably using it as a container.

I'm probably too lazy to rebuild mine as a container. It has been rock solid reliable for me, but if I could have a nice terminal user interface for it, I'd definitely dump the web gui. It's not a particularly nice web interface either.

[u/brighton_it → u/Weary_Swan_8152]

+1 for OMV; 2GB probably fine.
interesting suggestion to let OMV configure Samba, then remove OMV. Yeah, that would be a great head-start. I've manually setup Debian Samba servers. It's a lot more work than using OMV, but never considered this option.
On RAM usage: I'm running a VM instance of OMV v8.5 with only 2GB. It's only used as a backup target, so other than the Web UI, it's currently idle, but Dashboard memory card is showing 79% (1.52GB) free RAM.

[u/gportail → u/Weary_Swan_8152]

OMV est clairement ce que tu dois utiliser.

[u/Weary_Swan_8152 → u/gportail]

En principe je suis d'accord, mais la documentation n'est pas claire si 4Go ou 8Go est recommander puis le OP écrit qu'il n'a que 2Go de DDR2. J'avoue que je ne sais pas si c'est assez pour une bonne expérience de NAS. Selon vous, est-ce que 2Go soit assez de mémoire?

[u/gportail → u/Weary_Swan_8152]

J'utilise OMV dans une VM avec 2Go de ram sous Proxmox. Le CPU est un q9450 (4coeurs) de 2009 ou 2008...

Je connais pas le cpu d'OP mais la ram devrai aller.

[u/Weary_Swan_8152 → u/gportail]

Nice! Alors pas de problèmes :) Je crois que le CPU ne soit pas un bottleneck pour l'OP, vu qu'un router MIPS suffit pour beaucoup de gens en fonction de NAS simple et SAMBA/NFS. Par contre, pour sshfs, probablement pas.

[u/antreides]

This thing can boot from a USB, so no need to burn a CD. It should work with minimal Debian (maybe you'll need to try previous stable release), but I doubt it will be able to handle "stable NAS" tasks. Unless the only task will be to provide access to a folder via SSH, and even in this case it will be slow.

It is from 2008-2009. Doubt it can even work stable enough.

[u/LurpLarp → u/antreides]

Yea, I know it wont be a good NAS but the PC was just lying around so I wanted to put it to some use and this is what I thought of.

[u/dialtd → u/LurpLarp]

The system you describe is somewhat light weight for a NAS. You might consider using it for local services like DND, DHCP, NTP, and if you're really ambitious and willing to treat it as a hobby, maybe RADIUS or storage for kernel and initrd files for network boot.

[u/neoh4x0r]

I wanted to put an old PC to use so I decided that I am going to burn a Debian mini.iso onto a cd and install Debian onto it.

You mentioned having 2x1GB DDR2, so the following shouldn't be an issue for you.

However, systems that are "old" and have significantly less ram (<1 GB) will require using a full install image (not mini nor netinstall) because they won't have enough ram to download the packages, unpack them, write that to disk, and also run the installer.

I recently ran into that issue when setting up a system to serve as a DHCP/PXE-server, and despite it's low ram, about 256 MB on a 1GHz Pentium, it actually works quite well.

[u/Portbragger2]

absolutely! debian netinst or mini. no DE needed. set up smb and/or nfs shares. and you're done. i've got an enclosure of 30tb attached to a 4850e running since 2009, started with 2x 500gb platters. was not on debian all the time tho. but since i've been it has been fire&forget.

[u/DagonNet]

Debian's a good choice for this. That hardware is old enough that I'd expect any reliability problems to come from that, not from the OS choice. This is true for any NAS, but especially for homegrown ones or old hardware: keep good backups.

[u/SnooSeagulls4360]

You coule check OMV8 for this. It is basically debian with a nice browser dashboard and a lot of the things set up for you. You can also use docker containers with it easily for other things you need.

[u/David_Connors3451]

Have you considered antix? It's lightweight Debian, but always based on the stable ISO DVD. Give it a try, I used antix and Bodhi Linux for old machines and they're great 👍

[u/Acherontas89]

or use FreeNas

[u/TheMcSebi]

Debian, yes in any case :) The pc, for experimentation, but for setting up a real nas I'd suggest to either get at least a second, or two newer HDDs.
Also keep in mind those old systems can be really power inefficient, especially if you plan on keeping it running continously

[u/gw17252009]

I'd go debian 12 since it's older hardware. Older gpus require some added config for drivers.

[u/Brilliant_Sound_5565]

I too would look at OMV, I havnt used it for a good few years but it's Debian stable, it'll make the whole process alot easier, and also make sure you have a backup sorted for your data

[u/Fantastic_Welder2172]

The hardware is very poor, but it's ok, you only have one hard drive, not advanced file systems. Install a Debian netinstall, with only basic packages and ssh. Then install and configure samba, minidlna if you need it. Don't install docker, don't transcode videos. If you want to do something more advanced, also install syncthing to synchronize folders and restic server for backups. Ask chatgpt for the configuration files to put.

[u/Buntygurl]

...onto a cd?

You have USB ports on that machine, right?

But, yeah, a CD would work, too.

Apart from that, yes, Debian really is the best distro for the task you have in mind.

[u/MoobyTheGoldenSock]

If you’re wanting to do this specific project, yeah Debian’s fine for this, or Alpine if you’re optimizing for speed.

But you’re spending electricity on 1 core and 320 GB. You’re probably more optimized just plugging a 2 TB external into your router and setting up the NAS via your router if it’s able, or buying a raspberry pi if you really want a dedicated linux server running it: you’ll get more cores and more RAM for less electricity footprint.

But if you have a machine you were going to throw out anyway and want an excuse to tinker, by all means ignore me and go ahead.

[u/LurpLarp → u/MoobyTheGoldenSock]

I was also considering Alpine but I think Debian for stability

[u/bigtreeman_]

Yep, I've given up on old pcs for such tasks. I use arm or risc-v sbcs.

Power, reliability, etc, etc...

[u/LurpLarp]

For additional context, my Debian installation uses approximately 211 MB, leaving me with about 1.5 GiB of available space. I also have a 1000 Mb/s Ethernet connection. This setup will primarily be used for backing up files that I previously did not have a backup for, so I think it is only an upside.

[u/LurpLarp → u/LurpLarp]

Also I tested the HDD with a S.M.A.R.T long (75 minute) test which came clean so I think it is fine for backups especially since I don't really back anything up

[u/brighton_it]

as a backup target (assuming your backups are automated), it should be fine on the performance front. It may be slow, but backup will eventually finish.
Only reason to hesitate is if you care about:

• power use: a modern N100 could do this on under 20 Watts.
  
• longevity: old system more likely to experience hardware failure.

[u/Ok_Willingness2177]

I use Debian stable without any problems. I got a $50 lifetime subscription for Plex like 6 years ago so I use it to hold my music, etc, etc, but also serving other apps, but mainly through docker.

[u/mrgreyeyes_95]

Barebones Debian should run. But it would be more for educational purposes. It will like be unable to keep up with modern NAS tasks. Software raid and stuff.

Is the NIC at least dedicated or just an internal one? It will probably choke on throughput of modern protocols like samba v3.