I finally broke down and built another Linux box to replace PLMS1(Pacific Landmark Server 1) which died a graceful death a few months ago.
Initially I recovered the data from the server and installed it on Ubuntu 7.10 desktop running as a virtual machine on top of my XP desktop.
But I’ve been a lucky recipient of a quite a few Dell GX280s which are more than powerful enough to run LAMP as a test bed; SAMBA and a few other applications to keep the infrastructure up and running. These puppies have a small footprint so I have two backup systems sitting around just in case.
Installing Ubuntu 8.04 Server was a breeze except that I thought it would at least install a basic desktop for management. But that wasn’t too difficult to install. (Just apt-get install ubuntu-desktop.) Everything else should be easy to install and configure.