Media files, data synchronization, and remote backups, oh my! Home computing has advanced to a point where it's practical to run your own home server, and we're running down the five best tools for the job.

Photo by Rudolf Schuba .

Earlier this week we asked you to tell us what software you used to power your home servers and add that extra kick of convenience and power to your home networks. After tallying up the votes we're back to share the top five contenders for the home server championship belt. The following server implementations cover a broad spectrum of solutions ranging from install-it-and-forget-it to tinker-your-way-to-perfection and everything in between.

FreeNas

FreeNAS is by the far the most bare bones home server software in the top five. More specifically, FreeNAS is an extremely minimal distribution of FreeBSD. How minimal, you ask? You can run FreeNAS off a 32MB flash drive. Designed to be an absolutely skeletal operating system to maximize the resources devoted to storage FreeNAS is great for when you want a simple operating system that leaves every hard drive bay and disk platter wide open for file storage goodness. Despite being so slim, FreeNAS is still feature packed, including support for BitTorrent and remote web-based file management via QuiXplorer; it even serves as the perfect iTunes music server. You can boo FreeNAS off nearly any media: hard drives, optical discs, floppy disks, and flash-based media. It has support for both hardware and software based RAID, disk encryption, and management of groups and users via local authentication or Microsoft Domains. Even an old dusty Pentium III can become a headless file-serving powerhouse with the addition of a basic $20 SATA PCI card to pack it full of modern hard drives, thanks to FreeNAS's scant 96MB of RAM requirements.

Ubuntu Server Edition

Ubuntu Server Edition shares the ease of use that has catapulted its desktop-edition sibling to popularity. The automated LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) installation makes installing the core components of a robust server a walk in the park compared to manually configuring each component on your own. While configuring Ubuntu isn't going to be as easy as grabbing a pre-configured Windows Home Server off the shelf at your local Best Buy and plugging it in, there are a wealth of applications to help you integrate your Linux based home server with the rest of your network. It won't be as straight forward as using Windows Home Server or a Time Machine backup, but Ubuntu is more than powerful and capable enough to handle all your media streaming, remote back up, and file serving needs. We've covered using Ubuntu as the basis for a home media server before, so if you're considering trying it out check out how to build a Linux media server and build yourself an affordable media server to get an idea of what you're in for.

Apache

Apache is the only entry in the top five that isn't a completely stand alone server package. Apache is, however, open source and cross platform; it support a dozen operating systems; and it's the backbone of many of your fellow readers' home server operations. Because of its widespread adoption and extreme compatibility with a variety of platforms, we're including it here. No matter what operating system you throw on your home server, you're almost guaranteed that you can run Apache on it. Nearly four years ago we covered how to set up a personal web server using Apache , and it's still relevant and worth a look for getting an idea what the setup entails. While you're at it, you may also want to try setting up a home Subversion server with your Apache installation for keeping track of file revisions.
viagra buy cheap />

Debian

Why use Debian for a home server? There are over twenty five thousands software packages available for Debian, and the operating system supports 12 unique hardware architectures. There's a a slim-to-none chance you've got a computer that can't run it. Like Ubuntu—a Debian derivative by the way—you can configure this flexible operating system to do nearly anything you can imagine, from serving media and remote backups to running your own web server with a wiki and running your own mail server . Like other Linux distributions, Debian can be used to run a low-power and headless server when run without a GUI and using remote administration. Along with FreeNAS, Debian is a prime candidate for turning an aging computer into a quiet, tucked-in-the-basement server.

Windows Home Server

If your home is filled with Windows-based computers—which the average American home certainly is—it's tough to go wrong with Windows Home Server. It isn't free, and until recently you couldn't even buy it separately from the home servers sold by Hewlett Packard and others—but even though it has the distinction of being both the only commercial and closed-source software package on the list, that doesn't mean you should dismiss it out of hand. Windows Home Server stands definitively as the most Average Joe-friendly server implementation on the list. Not only is it the only server package you can buy pre-configured and installed in a ready to go off-the-shelf server, but Microsoft has gone out of their way to make the experience of using Windows Home Server as transparent and painless as possible for the end user. In fact, many Lifehacker readers expressed the "It just works" sentiment when logging a vote for Windows Home Server. Once you have all your computers connected to your Windows Home Server, you'll have a centralized backup location that supports up to 10 remote PCs and indexed remote file storage. Printers are shared and there is easy to use remote server access to log into your archives from anywhere in the world. Files are no longer lost in a mass of drives, add a few terabyte drives to a Windows Home Server and you'll never wonder if that movie file is on the F, G, or H drive again. Windows Home Server spans drives using Drive Extender so that files are located in a single folder namespace, sans drive divisions. The most recent update of Windows Home Server even adds an option to backup the server itself to external drives for extra data redundancy. Since the Microsoft site for Windows Home Server is heavy on promotion but low on actual screenshots, check out our screenshot tour for more.

Now that you've seen the contestants vying for the title of best home server, it's time to log your votes to see who will go home with the belt—and the task of storing your mountains of media files and remote backups.

by Gina Trapani

Recent Lifehacker features have covered how to run a personal web server , how to control your home computer from anywhere , and how to set up a personal wiki . For users on a home network with a router installed, home servers are not accessible from the Internet because of many modern routers' built-in firewall.

Today we'll cover how to open up specific ports on your router to allow access to a home server behind a firewall.

Please note: this tutorial is for advanced users. Your router's firewall is there to protect you from evildoers who try to control your computer over the Internet. Make sure that any service you expose to the Internet is secured with a strong password.

Enabling outside access to an internal computer on a home network requires that you set up NAT – "network address translation," or port forwarding. Forwarding sends requests for ports on the outside of your firewall to the right computer on the inside.

For instance, someone on the outside requests a page from a web server at your router's IP address. With port forwarding viagra brand cheap set up, your router knows to forward requests for port 80 (a web server's default port) to the computer with the web server running only – and none of the others on your network.

Port forwarding is only necessary when you want to expose a service to computers on the Internet outside your firewall. Some servers you'd want to do that with:

• a home web server
• a personal wiki
• a BitTorrent client uploading as well as downloading
• a VNC server
• a home FTP server

While all routers vary slightly, port forwarding is fairly simple. Here's how to get it set up:

Step 1. Determine your server's internal IP address.

All the computers on your internal network have an IP address which looks something like 192.168.0.XXX. Get on the computer with the server running and open a command window. Then type ipconfig to determine the machine's internal address, like so:

In this case, as you can see, the server's internal IP address is 192.168.0.11.

Step 2. Configure your router.

Most routers have an web-based administrative interface that's located at http://192.168.0.1. (This address does depend on your model. Consult your router user guide for more info.)

Once you've gone to the router administration, entered the password (if one is set up), there should be an area called "Port forwarding." There, you'll set the port number that requests from the Internet will come in, and the internal computer that should fulfill those requests. Here's a screenshot of my Netgear router set up to port forward 5900 to my VNC server, which is at 192.168.0.11 (see above). Click on the image to see a larger version.

Here's a table of common services and their default port numbers.

Any other services you port forward for that I missed? Add it in the comments to this article or drop me a note at tips at lifehacker.com.

by Gina Trapani

Ever been at a friend's house and wanted to show off a photo you left saved on your home computer? Ever wanted to check from the office that your daughter's doing homework and not instant messaging with friends at home? Ever need to grab a file on your home hard drive when you're miles away? An age-old protocol called VNC and some free software lets you control your home computer from anywhere.

In this tutorial, we'll set up a VNC (Virtual Network Computing) server on your home computer, which will let you connect to your desktop and drive it from any Internet-connected computer.

Notes and warnings: Running a server and opening up a port on your home computer to the Internet is a risky undertaking. Make sure your computer has all the latest security patches, has been checked for spyware and viruses and that you're using strong passwords. The VNC protocol is not inherently secure. This how-to assumes you're comfortable with basic networking concepts. If you're scared off by the fine print, check out an easier alternative [1] to VNC. Still with me? Read on.

The Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol remotely controls another computer over a network. Think of it as a window into your home computer's desktop from any other computer. Your key presses and mouse clicks get transferred over the network and happen on the remote computer in real time, and anyone at the remote computer can watch the action as it happens.

A few things you can do with a VNC server running at home:

• Start a downloading a large file, like a movie, in the morning so it's there when you get home in the evening
• Search your home computer's IM logs, address book or file system for important information
• Help Mom figure out why Microsoft Word doesn't start without having to go to her house (even though Mom would like to see you more often)
• Control a headless (monitor-less) machine like a media center or file server in another room in the house from the laptop on the couch

VNC requires two components for a successful connection: the server on your home computer, and the viewer on the remote computer. Let's set up each component to get going. Here's how.

Step 1. Install the VNC server.

Windows users: TightVNC is free Windows VNC server and client software. TightVNC is a nice choice because it also allows for file transfers and high compression levels for slow connections. Download TightVNC from here and run the installation on your home computer. Start the server, and set a password for incoming connections.

TightVNC can be set to run as a Windows service, which means your Windows usernames and passwords can be used to authenticate on the VNC server connection. Be sure viagra brand by online all your Windows passwords are set and strong, and that any passwordless guest accounts are disabled.

Mac users: OSXvnc is a free Mac VNC server. Download, install, set up a password and start the server.

If your VNC server is connected directly to the Internet, it is now listening for Internet requests [2] on port 5900, VNC's default port (which is also configurable). Visit WhatIsMyIP from your home computer to determine its IP address and write it down.

Step 2. Install the VNC client.

On the remote Windows computer, also download and install TightVNC, but this time, start the viewer, NOT the server. If you're on a Mac, download the free Chicken of the VNC Mac viewer to connect to your home PC. Enter your home computer's IP address [3] and password to connect.

Here's a screengrab of a VNC connection to my Windows PC from my Mac. Click on the image to see a larger version.

And that's that! You're virtually sitting at your home desktop from anywhere in the world.

A few extra VNC tips to chew on:

• For slower network connections, set the compression to "best." The window image quality will be lower, but the connection response will be snappier.
• Bring a VNC viewer with you on a USB memory stick so you don't have to download and install on every computer you want to use to connect to your server.
• Avoid having to install a server on Mom's computer; email her the 166K self-extracting SingleClick UltraVNC server for your next tech support phone session. More on SingleClick in an upcoming Lifehacker feature.

Gina Trapani is the editor of Lifehacker. Her special feature Geek to Live appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] LogMeIn is a web-based application that also provides this remote desktop control and may be a better option for some folks. I prefer VNC because it's more of a challenge and doesn't require third party intervention. [back to top]

[2] If your home computer is behind a home network router with a firewall, remote computers will not be able to connect. You must open up a port on your router's firewall and forward requests to it to your computer, a how-to that's beyond the scope of this article but will be covered in an upcoming Lifehacker feature is covered in the Lifehacker feature How to access a home server behind a firewall. [back to top]

[3] Alternately, you can enter your home computer's domain name. For more information on setting that up, see previous Lifehacker feature Assign a domain name to your home server. This way, when connecting using the VNC viewer, you can enter an address like mycomputer.dyndns.org instead of an IP address