Re: [gentoo-dev] Setting up a server with Gentoo

[Troy Dack]

Brave Cobra wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been writing article on setting up a server using Gentoo 1.4 for a
> windows Network. Basically it covers setting up DHCP, DNS, SAMBA, Apache
> and MySQL. Some other servers, like sendmail, CVS, OpenSSL Apache server
> and Squid will be included in the future.

Please pick something other than sendmail, especially if you are 
targeting it at new comers.  Postfix + procmail is a nice combo 
(IMNSHO), others are qmail and courier (I use courier-imap too).

> The prelimenary article can be found at
> http://www.bravecobra.com/docs/setupserver.html
> That article is subject to change of course.
> However, before I publish it to the Wide Internet world, I would like
> some of you Gentoo experts to read it through and let me know whether I
> told something wrong or how I could explain something better to the
> newbies. Yes, it's intend to be a newbie guide.
> Any further help is much appreciated.

I notice that you are advocating dnsmasq because it is not as resource 
intensive as BIND.  I'm running bind on a P200 with apache-2.0 and a 
heap of other crap, it does just fine.

The other advantage that you have with bind9 is the ability to do 
dynamic dns updates on your local zone files when dhcp hands out a new 
lease.  This makes plug and network for you local lan really easy.  Any 
windows clients get a hostname based on the machine name, and it is 
resolvable by other machines in the network.

If you want some sample zone and named.conf files let me know.

WRT the firewall, you say that your router does most of it for you. 
Apart from the netfilter docs, point people to a freshmeat search for 
iptables firewall scripts (there are hepas of them), I'll also plug one 
that I have massaged from another script: 
http://linux.tkdack.com/module.php?mod=firewall

With your mail server setup make sure that you include some sort of imap 
server (and note the differences between mbox & maildir and which 
servers use which).  On a local lan it is really pointless having to pop 
mail from the server.  Another option (if the clients are going to be 
Linux) is to have the home directories exported via nfs and the mail 
storage be in the home dir, then the linux users can access their mail 
with traditional clients and point the client at their home dir.  I 
don't know of any Windows programs that can do this, so they still need 
a retrieval method.

Thanks for the Samba<->WinXP tip, I'll have to give it a try, I've been 
trying to get WinXP to auth with my samba box for a while :)

The proxy-config.pac file is a nice inclusion.

Don't forget some comments regarding log files, setting up of sysklogd 
(or your prefered log daemon), rotation of log files and regular 
checking on log files.

-- 
	Troy Dack
	http://linux.tkdack.com		http://webportage.sf.net



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