Server

[Jasont41]

How would I configure a server with a windows 7 laptop and two raspberry pi\'s? Where i could use the processing power on my Laptop? I have no idea if this is possible or not, but it would be legit if it were.

[Chris]

I dont know how in full, but I would start by uninstalling windows and installing one of the many flavours of linux. Linux Mint Maybe for a Minty Raspberry smell.

Then you would probably need to set up a bramble (cluster) with your laptop as the host pc but this may work different to how you want as you would be using the Laptop resources which would be backed up by the Raspberry Pi\'s ( like little slaves )..

Easiest way though would be to just install WAMP on your Windows Laptop and use it as the server,

[mikeanthonywild]

You will need to install a web server on the laptop first, i would recommend Lighttpd - it\'s lightweight, fast and easy to configure. You then need a copy of linux on both of the RPis and, using a Gigabit switch, hook them up to your laptop. Lighttpd needs to be installed on each of the RPis as well and you should configure your laptop (henceforth known as the load balancer) so that the IP addresses of the two RPis are listed as load balancing nodes. Finally, they all need to have access to a single network storage device so that they all have access to the web files to serve. Either that or you need to set up a distributed or mirroring file system.

[bradburts]

What kind of server do you want, web server, file server, mail server?
For a webserver have a look at [censored reported to be a malware site]
This will install a LAMP webserver on a USB memory stick.
Its very straight forward and a great way to get started if you\'re a little worried about configuring your laptop, all the files are on the memory stick, you don\'t install onto your laptop.
Once the download has completed you can start and stop the server from a little GUI panel. As everything is on the memory stick then you can just copy the USB stick and create a slightly different server configuration.
If you want to link your laptop and RPIs then I think you are talking about a file server.
I would make one of the RPIs the file server as the RPI is low power and can be always on.
To do this you will need to get up to speed with the Samba guides.
Samba configuration may look scarey but give it a go and you will learn a lot!

[mikeanthonywild]

That\'s a point, I wrongly assumed you he was wanting a web server. What type of server are you looking for?

[bradburts]

If you want to harness the power of the laptop then a window\'s webserver (WAMP) is fine.
You can send requests from the RPI and process those with PHP.

PS
XAMPP is also a great windows server for getting started with.
As you get more confident consider switching the laptop to linux, perhaps booting the laptop from CD or memory stick into Ubuntu or maybe even run Ubuntu from VirtualBox just to get the hang of linux? The reason is that it can be quite tricky to configure some of the open source applications under WAMP, there is a lot more information on LAMP setups and the package manager tend to have all the settings matched up.
Plus the programming environment can be a whole lot better in linux, its a lot easier to find and link commands and utilities, saving you the need to program from scratch, rather just program the glue to hold the bits together.

[obarthelemy]

Hi Jason.

Could you be a little more specific about what you want to run on the computers ? The Pi is quite powerful, so won\'t need any help from a Windows PC for most things; and the cases were it *could* use help, (some games, physics simulations, video encoding, bitcoin mining... ?), are very specific and require a specifc answer.

[Asgo]

or to go a bit more low level,
install some MPI on each of the node in your cluster and do some parallel computing/programming on your own
depends on which level your network setup is supposed to run

[Jasont41]

I would like a file server. Would it possible use to the computing power from the r-pi\'s on my laptop?

[Jasont41]

And.. I have two hard drive bays, I am putting a full debian distro on a 320gb, along with my 750gb primary with windows 7 home.

[kme]

[quote]Quote from Jasont41 on November 11, 2011, 20:33
I would like a file server. Would it possible use to the computing power from the r-pi\'s on my laptop?[/quote]A file server requires next to zero CPU power. A 386 would get bored.

[obarthelemy]

Hi Jason.

Indeed a file server requires almost 0 CPU power. Pretty much any computer, even a 10 year old one, can be a decent file server. What it does require, is a bit of I/O (input / output) bandwidth (or throughput), because all that a file server does is take files from the hard disk and send them over the network, or the other way around, which is pure I/O.
Your PC will make a fine file server. If it\'s running Windows, right-click on the drives and Share them with Everyone. Linux will find them. It does mean everyone in your home can see all the files though, so you might want instead to only share a folder (same procedure, only right-click n the folder, not the whole drive). You can also password-protect your shares, allow some/all people to write/delete stuff on them... it\'s a bit more complicated, but you can google up tutorials. Linux can share too, of course.
Actually, a Pi would make an OK file server too, as long as there aren\'t too many client PCs (2 is fine). You\'d need the disk to be in USB enclosures though, the Pi doesn\'t have IDE nor SATA ports. It would be a nice project, and would save on electricity :-p
If what you want to share are films or music, there\'s a relatively new standard called DLNA or UPnP that makes it a bit easier to navigate and watch content. People is these forums are hard at work on making sure the Pi can act as a UPnP/DLNA server or client soon after release. My phone does both, so it should be easy ^^ A very well regarded Windows DLNA server is TVersity, and it\'s free.

PS: as always, Wikipedia is a good place to start learning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network

[Jasont41]

Again, would it possible to harness the raspi\'s processing power for use on my PC?

[obarthelemy]

You need to be more specific, again.
Last time around, it was for use as a file server, which does not require processing power so much as I/O, so I answered that with a yes both ways (the PC can be a file server for the Pi, and the Pi can be a file server, too).
What do you want to harness the pi\'s power from the PC for ?

[Jasont41]

Gaming and hacking. I run a script to send thousands of emails a second, but my AMD A6 vision quad core needs more power to run newer games and keep up with the capacity of some new mail servers.

[obarthelemy]

No.
The CPU power of the PI is several times less than that of an x86 PC, and so is it\'s I/O performance. If you PC is struggling, the Pi would be swamped.
You could use it to send your emails though. It will go several times slower, but a least it would free up your PC for gaming.
For gaming, no luck at all, there\'s nothing the Pi can do to help your PC.

[Jasont41]

Will the raspi be strong enough to preform a ddos attack?

[kme]

[quote]Quote from Jasont41 on November 11, 2011, 23:29
Will the raspi be strong enough to preform a ddos attack?[/quote]Are you nuts? We couldn\'t even be bothered to answer that.

[gbl08ma]

I think we should add a hardware based malware filter so we can make sure RPis are not used for bad things... not sure how a \"h/w based malware filter\" would work though... with a h/w firewall perhaps?

[Johannes]

[quote]Quote from Jasont41 on November 11, 2011, 23:29
Will the raspi be strong enough to preform a ddos attack?
[/quote]

As the Raspberry Pi is just one machine, I don\'t see how you expect it to execute a distributed denial of service attack. Also, would you be so kind to stop trolling this board and go back to where you came from? This thread should be closed.

[abishur]

Actually, that question has been asked before. The official answer was to the tune of \"we\'re trying to get this set up in schools so please don\'t go planting ideas that would frighten our target base (I.E. people who know little about computers and would therefore freak out over such an allegation)\"

That said, *anything* can be used as link in a DDOS chain, that\'s what makes them so insidious. However, if you\'re sporting a quad core processor, I\'m not certain how well distributed processing would work using a little 700 MHz processor, let alone an ARM (would such a program even be able to *communicate* with the guy?!) for any application.

By all means keep asking questions, but keep let\'s keep the unsavory/illegal ones off the board, if that\'s something you really want to do then please do so privately (and please do so without the help of the r-pi )

[Jasont41]

Disclaimer: I am in \'Kahots\' with my school district to find the weak points of the school\'s network and mail server. The only Websites or servers I have crashed are those I have had Permission to play with. I am only looking for tools to expedite the process.

I don\'t use my skills for evil

[abishur]

Ah, a white hat then, very cool.

[Jasont41]

Or a redhat:P

[hmcilroy]

There's a linux version of xampp.  You can run it off a usb drive.  Could you use it as a development only server?