Media Server Setup Notes

Hardware

The main purpose of an educational media server is to provide data (usually via HTTP) to clients on a local area network. This means a network interface and a lot of storage are more important than graphics card capability and possibly even physical memory.

I used an older PC with low memory, but a decent amount of disk space.

Shuttle XPC

• Shuttle XPC SB77G5 - small form factor PC
• Dual core Pentium 4 3.0Ghz
• 512 MB memory
• 1 80GB ATA disk
• 1 300GB SATA disk
• Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
• NVidia GeForce 7600 GS graphics card (VGA, DVI, and S-Video out), AGP
• DVD RW

Software

Operating System

I tried Ubuntu 12.04.1 first, via DVD install. But even in "Live" mode, it ran really slow on 512MB of physical memory. So next I tried Lubuntu 12.04 Desktop, which worked much better.

Operating System Setup

1. Prepare Media
   1. Retrieve i386 desktop .iso image from www.lubuntu.net.
   2. Burn .iso to blank CD-R

1. Install OS
   1. Accept most defaults
   2. Install updates over network connection during installation
   3. Create a generic user account. *Write down username/password, to be passed on to future admin*

1. Post Installation Configuration