[COLUG] Hard Drive Failure?

[Jim]

Matthew Gardlik wrote:

> I think I may have had my first hard drive failure. 

Well before you give up on the drive, 
unplug and replug all the cables to the drive, then try again. 

If it boots, run the badblocks command. 

Also check out the S.M.A.R.T stuff.

Knoppix handy for some of this futzing. 
Unfortunately, I don't think Knoppix includes LVM stuff, 
so Knoppix' utility might be limited for Fedora. 

> So, my question is, what is the best way to go about fixing things? 

Besides getting a new hard drive, that depends on what you want 
to do and even then, there's no one best way. 

> Can 
> I just replace the old hda with a new drive, and re-install the system, 
> and then configuring fstab to mount the other hard drive as home? 

Yup. That's fine. 

> If 
> possible, I would like to make sure the Linux installer doesn't format 
> hdb, 

The surest way to avoid messing up hdb is to unplug the IDE 
cable to hdb during installation. This might affect jumpers on hda. 

After installing Linux on (new) hda, 
then plug in hdb and futz with fstab. 
Keep in mind the !@$%@%^@#$ e2label idiocy that Red Hat distros 
are fond of. It's best to remove any e2labels on the hdb drive 
_before_ exposing hdb to the newly installed Linux of hda. 

Knoppix is handy for some of this futzing. 
Unfortunately, I don't think Knoppix includes LVM stuff, 
so Knoppix' utility might be limited for Fedora. 

> The second part to my question, and much less important question at the 
> moment, are there any good suggestions for distros to use as a server 
> distro?  I seem to remember a thread on the mailing list about using 
> Fedora for servers, but any recommendations would be welcome.

Well, for server stuff, like you seem to be talking about, 
use Centos instead of Fedora. Fedora is more leading edge. 
Centos is more boring and reliable. 

> I have a server running Fedora that I use for file storage, as a 
> webserver, dhcp, and a firewall for my home network. 

Oops. 

That's not a good approach security wise. 
You've put all your eggs in one basket. 
_When_ (not if) you computer is compromised, 
you'll lose control of everything. 

You should break up the functionality into several machines. 

1. The firewall should be dedicated to just being a firewall
   (and your DHCP server). 

2. Your fileserver should be on your LAN behind the firewall. 

3. Your webserver should be on yet another box on a DMZ network, 
   _not_ on your LAN. You can create the DMZ network with a 
   single firewall that has three NICS, or with two simple firewalls. 

If you need some extra machines, ask for some free hardware. 
You'll get it.