NASLite

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NASLite
NASLite
Website	serverelements.com
Company/ developer	Server Elements
OS family	Linux
Supported platforms	x86
Kernel type	Monolithic kernel, Linux
Default user interface	Console/Terminal
License	Freely Distributable
Working state	Current

NASLite is a free Linux distribution for x86-based computers with PCI interface which fits onto a 1.44MB floppy disk, providing a way of using the computer as network-attached storage. It supports serving files to clients running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. Other proprietary versions are available which support different networking protocols, or booting the operating system from a USB Mass Storage device. NASLite floppy disk images can be downloaded for free from either the Server Elements web page or the NASLite sourceforge project. The NASLite floppys have been rebadged NanoNAS for v2.0.

1 Minimum Hardware Requirements
2 Networking Capabilities
3 Compatibility
4 See also
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Minimum Hardware Requirements

NASLite runs well on obsolete hardware, but requires at least a computer with PCI interface. Other minimum requirements are a 486DX or Pentium CPU, 16 MB RAM, a PCI ethernet card, IDE hard disk drive, and a floppy disk or bootable CD-ROM drive.^[1]

[edit] Networking Capabilities

NASLite turns its target machine into a simple file server. Since file serving takes up very little processing speed as opposed to network speed or hard drive speed, it is able to run on comparatively old computers with little processing power. As it runs from a floppy disk, hypothetically all (usually four) IDE channels can be used for harddrives.

NASlite has three variants supporting different file serving protocols. These are Samba to support serving to Microsoft Windows client machines, NFS to serve to Unix based operating systems, or FTP (Anonymous FTP only). It also supports remote administration via telnet, and includes a web server to display usage and error logs.

[edit] Compatibility

Since it is based on Linux, NASLite (like other Linux distributions) supports new larger hard drives that often are not supported by older machines, by bypassing the BIOS and directly accessing the harddrive(s), greatly increasing the usefulness of an older computer for serving large amounts of data.