Project: [[Oracle]].Server

This past weekend, [wizard] and I spent most of our time in the evening (and into the very early morning) working on my network (which has been dubbed tsnlocal).

We started the tsnlocal project in beta the weekend before to solve a problem with file sharing on the network. There was a sub-network in the house, and the two rings couldn’t talk to each other.

Now with about 4 people hosting content, and one more preparing his computer to join the beta program, we’ve set up a small computer, with a 500mhz processor and a 3.6 gb hdd in my dining room, and installed Google Desktop on it.

I originally did this experiment at work, to scan the corporate network drives so that I could find any document or software package that I needed – whether I was actually supposed to or not. Now people come to me when they need something found at work. So I took the same idea, and pitched it to [wizard], who initially thought it was not the best idea (since it would slow down the other computers’ connections). But I went ahead with it anyway, but only with my computer and one other, hosted by KD.

I set up Google Desktop, and mapped all the important network shares to a network drive on that computer. Then I set Google Desktop to index those shares (as drives). I only run it at night so that it does not have any adverse affects
on the network usage during the day. So far, it’s working great.

When it tells me that the indexing is complete, then I will give the project a test, and see how it works. The next step will be to set up a dynamic dns for my ip, assign that domain to “tsnlocal.net” and have others test it from remote positions. If it runs like planned, users will be able to search for things on the network with extreme ease, and not have to wander through network shares, and network computers to find what they might be looking for.

If this beta project is successful, I’ll be setting up several more small computers to do the same thing, since each computer is limited to about 23 network drives per computer. If I choose to do that, then I will have to enable the distributed search feature (or whatever it’s called) with google desktop, so that the index can be stored remotely and built upon by multiple computers, all connected with a single gmail account.

It’s the start of a real networking project for me, and probably one of my very first significant ones (other than getting the computers at my house to see each other).

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On a side note, during the day, since I do not run google desktop, I have Azureus set up to get my bit-torrents. But because my hard drive is small on that computer, I have it read, write, and store to a network folder on my main PC. This removes the processes that are required to run Azureus (which are a lot, since it’s java based) on Windows away from my PC, while still having the abilty to utilize the massive hard drive space of the main PC. Pretty cool in my opinion.