With disk space becoming less expensive (100GB Western Digital 7200rpm available
for US $195 in January 2002), it is viable to use an Open Source
software-based CD Server solution, instead of paying
$800-$4,000 for a software, thin-server, or CD Jukebox solution.
I've setup my CD Server on a Pentium 200 with 64MB RAM, using one of these
large drives.
Any comments, suggestions, additions, or corrections can be sent to my
email address at
Talcon Information Systems: <randy@talcon.com>.
This HOWTO is specifically directed toward System Administrators
and uses Linux for the examples. It should work with other flavors of
Unix provided that they have a loop device or a method of mounting a
CD image file within the directory tree as a block device using the
iso9660 file system.
The commands and utilities needed to setup your own CD Server
are already included in most (if not all) Linux distributions.
A Linux Distribution (This HOWTO uses
Linux-Mandrake for the examples)
dd - Converts and copies a file (a standard Unix command)
mount - Mounts and Unmounts filesystems (a standard Unix command)
Samba
- A Windows SMB/CIFS fileserver for Unix
NFS (optional for Unix) - Network File System
(included in Linux distributions)
Netatalk
(optional for Macs) - A package that lets a Unix machine supply
Appletalk print and file services on a LAN.
- Note
Previous to the 2.4 kernels, the Linux-Mandrake distribution I was using only had
support for 8 loop devices compiled into the kernel (see
Section 3
to increase this number).
At that time, you were only be able to share 8 CD's on a network
with that default value, and to share more than 8, the loop block driver source code (loop.c) needed
to be modified and a new kernel compiled.
With the 2.4 kernels, that is no longer required.
You can now set the number of loop
devices dynamically via the max_loop module parameter, or by passing max_loop=[1-255]
to the kernel on boot.
SMB HOWTO
by: David Wood, dwood (at) plugged.net.au. Part of the
Linux Documentation Project. This document describes how
to use the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, also called
the Session Message Block, NetBIOS or LanManager protocol,
with Linux using Samba.
Using Samba
by: Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown, Peter Kelly
1st Edition November 1999, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
ISBN 1-56592-449-5,
The Linux CD-ROM HOWTO
by: Jeff Tranter, tranter (at) pobox.com. Part of the
Linux Documentation Project. How to install, configure,
and use CD-ROM drives under Linux. It lists the supported
hardware and answers a number of frequently asked questions.
This HOWTO also gives some information on using multi-platter
CD-ROM drives with Linux.
CD-Writing HOWTO
by: Winfried Trümper, winni (at) xpilot.org. Part of the
Linux Documentation Project. This document explains how to write
CD-ROMs under Linux. This HOWTO also includes information on
making 1:1 image copies of CD-ROMs.
CDServer-HOWTO, Copyright
© 2000-2002, by Randolph J. Tata, All Rights Reserved
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and
no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included
in Appendix A entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any
potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the
concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely
at your own risk.
All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted
otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as
affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.
You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before
major installation and should make backups at regular intervals.
As always, check the revision history at the top of this document.
DocBook XML source for this document is available. Any
additions/changes should be made to the DocBook XML source, not derivative formats.
This documents home page is at the
CDServer-HOWTO
site page in case you need the latest version, or there is a problem
with the page format you are viewing.
My thanks go the readers of this HOWTO and those willing to share
their experiences and knowledge with me. I
have the pleasure of acknowledging:
If you have the capacity it would be nice to make the CDServer-HOWTO
available in a number of formats and languages.
If you've translated this document, please send to me:
Your name, email address, the language and URL to the translated document (preferred).
Or an email attachment of the work.
Please send either to my email address at
Talcon Information Systems: <randy@talcon.com>.
