Peppercorn Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 (edited) hi guys, I'm new here but after looking around I think that you'll hear a lot more from me.. What a great site! I am after some advice please?? I have just bought an old Dell server. P111 550 128meg of sd ram 2x scsi 9 gig HDs I want to use it as a server here at home and hook 5 computers up to it. 4 windoze and my Mandrake 9.2 box. (I hav'nt convinced the rest of the the family to use Mandrake YET!) I want it to be the internet gateway for the network as well as a mail server and a few other small database jobs. My question is........ What version of Mandrake or other Linux distro would be best suited to this server as in hardware wise and job wise???? The mandrake website says that it is suited to 9.2 as far as hardware is concerned but I wonder if that is the case in real life. Any suggestions??? Peppercorn Edited November 21, 2003 by mystified Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Welcome to the board. No reason why Mandrake 9.2 won't work on that setup. Although, if you are going to be using as a desktop, then I would suggest uping the ram to a minimum of 256M. Otherwise, everything should work. (I have no experience with scsi drives though) Hardware wise, you will need to have at least two networks cards if you are connected to a DSL or cable modem and a switch (preferably) between the server and the rest of the computers. One NIC for the internet and the other NIC for the home network. Install Mandrake with all the proper networking and server packages and you should be good to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmack Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Peppercorn, Glad you found this site! Think you'll find it a good place to get help! Kmack :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qchem Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 I probably wouldn't install X on the server box and use the latest version of Mandrake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 I agree with QChem on X but perhaps; for convenience you could install it BUT only boot to run level 3 It depends really how confident you are setting it up! Depending on how critical it might become you can think of a RAID 1 for your disks. Make sure you install webmin and/or linuxconf so you can admin it remotely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest siko9 Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 >> Make sure you install webmin and/or linuxconf so you can admin it remotely. Errr...I know about Webmin, but how do you administer remotely with linuxconf? TIA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peppercorn Posted November 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Thanks for all your advice. Question 1~~ If I installed X for all the setting up, how do I then make it boot up to init 3 automatically??? Question 2~~ Do I set the server up with a proxy for the internal network??? If so, what would that setting be?? Question 3~~ Should the network computers be running dhcp and the server have a static IP??? That'll do for now. Thanks for the help!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qchem Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 1. change /etc/inittab to the corresponding value. 2. sounds like a good idea, it's what I'd do using squid. 3. matter of preference Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Q3 That is the easiest and most convenient way of setting things up. The server should definitely have a static IP address (At least the inside NIC card should have a static IP attached to it). The server should then be running the DHCP server and each client machine receive a dynamic IP address. However, with all that said, it really doesn't matter which way you go with the client machines, just dynamic is much easier to setup and administer on windows machines then static IPs are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peppercorn Posted November 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2003 Well, thanks for all that. I will need to digest all that so I don't stuff up. I do have one more question though. Do I set up a domain or just a workgroup?? Thanks in advance Peppercorn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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