1. Introduction

With disk space becoming less expensive (30GB IBM 7200rpm for $160 in 08/2000), it is now viable to use an Open Source software-based CD Server solution, instead of paying $800-$4,000 for a software, thin-server, or CD Jukebox solution.

I've setup my CD Server on a P120 with 64MB RAM, using one of these large drives.

1.1. Intended Audience

This HOWTO is specifically directed toward System Administrators and uses Linux for the examples. It should work with other flavors of Unix provided that they have a loop device or a method of mounting a CD image file within the directory tree as a block device using the iso9660 file system.

1.2. Things You'll Need

The commands and utilities needed to setup your own CD Server are already included in most (if not all) Linux distributions.

Linux Distribution (This HOWTO uses Linux-Mandrake for the examples)
dd - Converts and copies a file (a standard Unix command)
mount - Mounts and Unmounts filesystems (a standard Unix command)
Samba - A Windows SMB/CIFS fileserver for Unix
NFS (optional) - Network File System (usually included in Linux distributions)

Caveats: The Linux-Mandrake distribution I'm using (7.0), only has support for 8 loop devices compiled into the kernel (see Section 3 to increase this number). In short, you'll only be able to share 8 CD's on a network at most with this default value, to share more than 8, you'll need to do a little more work.

1.3. Suggested Reading

Using Samba by: Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown, Peter Kelly 1st Edition November 1999, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. ISBN 1-56592-449-5,

1.4. Copyright

Please freely copy and distribute (sell or give away) this document in any format. It's requested that corrections and/or comments be fowarded to the document maintainer (Randolph Tata). You may create a derivative work and distribute it provided that you:

Send your derivative work (in the most suitable format such as sgml) to the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) or the like for posting on the Internet. If not the LDP, then let the LDP know where it is available.
License the derivative work with this same license or use GPL. Include a copyright notice and at least a pointer to the license used.
Give due credit to previous authors and major contributors.

If you're considering making a derived work other than a translation, it's requested that you discuss your plans with the current maintainer.

1.5. Disclaimer

Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.

All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before major installation and should make backups at regular intervals.

1.6. News

This is the first sgml release (version 1.00). SGML source for this document is available. Any additions/changes should be made to the sgml source, not derivative formats.

This documents home page is at the Open CD Server Project site page in case you need the latest version, or there is a problem with the page format you are viewing.

If you have the capacity it would be nice to make the CDServer-HOWTO available in a number of formats and languages.

1.7. Credits

In this version I have the pleasure of acknowledging

Mark F. Komarinski    markk (at) linuxdoc.org         LDP Author Guide
Jorge Godoy           godoy (at) metalab.unc.edu      LDP Author Guide
David C. Merrill      dcmerrill (at) mindspring.com   LDP Author Guide
Stein Gjoen           sgjoen (at) nyx.net             HOWTO-Template
Gregory Leblanc       gleblanc (at) cu-portland.edu   HOWTO-Template
Greg Ferguson         gferg (at) sgi.com              HOWTO-Template

1.8. Translations

No Translations yet.

Any comments or suggestions can be mailed to my email address at Talcon Information Systems: <randy@talcon.com>.