This exercise started as a goal to setup five computers that could act as a server with the least amount of software and modification to the readily available, and perhaps already installed, applications.
The computers;
1. Talos II 2x8 core ppc64le Debian.
2. 4 core AMD X86 Linux Mint
3. 2 core AMD x86 Linux Mint
4. Intel i7n laptop MX linux
5 RPi 3 B+ Raspian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) armv
And as a client only a TV with Web OS.
The computers all use Apache2 for servers. I wished only to use the minimum amount of server change from their installed settings. KISS was to be the intended result for this system. This is only used as a LAN setup, but could be put on the web.
Using the installed hard drives was out as they would all need to have the same content,,,,,no KISS, so using USB sticks were selected as the medium for this adventure. I purchased a 5TB USB drive, that I may never fill to capacity, and added four folders to the drive, Videos,Pictures,Docs, and Junk. I also have a 7 port powered hub as the RPi does not have enough power to operate more than a few standard USB sticks.
Apache setup. The standard server directory is /var/www/html. By using a web browser on the same computer as apache and putting localhost in the address bar should display the apache2 default page,index.html, if everything is up and running. This default page must be moved. Then in /var/www/html you can create several folders, I used srv1,srv2,srv3,srv4.
Of course any names can be used.
The USB sticks can now be remounted to the folders in /var/www/html/srv1 or 2,3,4, by opening a terminal and using,
umount /media/username/USBvids then sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/USBvids/ /var/www/html/srv1.
To keep things simple the USB sticks should be named with a single,no spaces, name when formatted, USB32G, USBvids, pictures, junk, etc..
CDROMs can be added to the server with umount /dev/sr0 and sudo mount /dev/sr0 /var/www/html/srv2. This does not work with most commercial CDs. To be investigated.
If you are using a remote client on you system by entering the URL of the server (192.168.x.xx) should get you to your server data.
All my computers are Debian based systems. Fedora, Alma, Rocky, ....I don't know.
Suggestions, comments, hints are all welcome.
