Re: [Sheflug] Dedicated Server Setup

[Marcus Hanwell <linux [at] xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 13:27, Steve Vernon wrote:
> We have a Linux dedicated server hosted by a company and we basically need
> to set it up.
> 
> I have a couple of books on the subject but they don't seem to help much. My
> experience of Linux/Unix is using it graphically, never much on the command
> line or settings etc.
> 
> I suppose I could put a problem to the list etc, but could take some time to
> fully setup the server and there could be something I have forgotten. It
> seems the company have just installed a basic redhat, but not configured
> anything.
> 
> Basically my company needs someone who knows all about:
> 
>     Linux
>     Bind/DNS (and MX thingy's)
>     Sendmail
>     FTP
>     Logs
>     Best way to administer the server from Windows at the moment (optional,
> I will be using Linux ASAP)
>     etc
> 
> That can be paid to either come to us (Buxton, Derbyshire- you seem to be
> the nearest list), or I can come to them. We could spent a day or so
> together working on the problem. I am in the process of learning Linux, so
> it would be helpful to do this face to face so I can understand the
> configuration choices etc.
> 
> This is for a production server that hopefully a lot of people will use, so
> the person needs to know Linux and ideally have setup a similar server.

You probably first of all want to actually install another distribution
of Linux as Red Hat are ceasing support for all free versions of their
distribution and replacing it with Fedora. I have worked out in Silicon
Valley, and back here on several servers and they can usually be
maintained without too many problems using SSH from Windows.

I generally don't install any X server or related apps and use the
command line exclusively. You can also use things like webmin to give a
web based administration system for the less technical administrators.
You do need a distro where they are going to continue to release
security updates etc that can also be installed from the command line on
a headless system.

This is where the choices become quite wide and varied. You might want
to choose an MTA with less security holes such as postfix/qmail. You can
then do maildir delivery which is often more efficient if using
IMAP/webmail. You might consider using sftp rather than ftp - can still
be done from Windows but it encrypts passwords etc. Are you not using
any web server such as Apache 2, and the 1.3.* branch?

Just some ideas to be going on with. For the distro I would probably
recommend Debian, Slackware, Gentoo or may be one of the BSDs and make
sure a good firewall policy is implemented on the box - don't want it
getting hacked!

Best wishes,

Marcus

___________________________________________________________________

Sheffield Linux User's Group -
http://www.sheflug.co.uk/mailfaq.html

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.