Looking for a simple OS for a NAS

[Ratatoskr]

So earlier this year I bought a small mini-ITX card with embedded cpu and some ram. The thought was to use it as a small server, running backups and perhaps a media server.

So I thought FreeNAS was the obvious solution, it has all the features I want (http interface, cifs/smb share, ftp) and it can be run on a USB stick.
But all I can get it to do is to run from the LiveCD, it will not install on a disk or on the usb stick (but it can see both).

So I tried Windows Home Server, thinking that perhaps Microsoft (for once) had something I could use. But oh no, first it wants me to erase the data on all my disks (even though the disk I'm installing it to is totally free, and the data I want to keep is on ntfs disk). Ok I thought, I'll just unplug my storage disks and install it on the only disk available. There everything seems to go fine, until it boots, where it just stops.

So now I'm just trying to install Ubuntu 8.04 server, something I'm already using on another machine which I know can be used as all I need. But it lacks a custom made http interface which I'd like to have, giving me an easy way to see how much space I've got, take backups, and perhaps admin some torrents in the process (which I know can be done using ssh of course, but still..)

So anyways (hey, 5th paragraph starting with so), should I figure out why FreeNAS isn't working, get it working and then I'll have something that does exactly what I want it to do, or are there other solutions out there that I should try?

(PS: The mini-ITX mb is a Intel D201GLY2 with a soldered on Intel Celeron 220 (64bit) 1.2GHz cpu and 1GB ram, it should be able to run most things)

 

[Ratatoskr]

No help? Oh well...

FreeNAS runs from cd but refuses to install on either disk or memory stick.

OpenFiler installs fine but only gives me a grub command line "grub>" after reboot.

Ubuntu installs and runs fine (of course), so I know the disk and the mbr are working like they should.

And Google fails me..

 

[moopet]

Why not just stick with ubuntu then?
CIFS is stable and all you need to do is share folders - a minimal install without X or gnome would save you a tiny bit of space but other than that is there anything wrong with this solution?

 

[Ratatoskr]

Like I said, I wanted something with a easy to use interface. And now I got FreeNAS to work, so I'm pretty happy with it.

 

[ShowerComic]

Back in the old days, I played around a lot with Slackware & whatever current version of SAMBA was at the time. -- Course if you want to understand Linux Slackware is the way to go, no question.

A simple one though would be contribs : www.contribs.org, or eServer. It's got a good web interface, along with several features you may not need though.
-- Real easy to set up.