A secure install lets you learn...
Written: Dec 12 '00 (Updated Dec 22 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Free and easy to install
Cons: Steep learning curve
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| cnelzie's Full Review: Mandrake Linux |
Not to long ago I decided to finally setup my server at home. I needed to do this for quite some time to share the cable-modem connection and also have the internal network be usable.
Anyway, I sat down and looked at my choices. I own a copy of WinNT 4.0 Workstation that I could have used as the proxy, but I also wished to do far more with it and I was not going to be able to do everything I needed with the hardware I have on hand. I even considered getting a copy of Windows 2000 Advanced Server, but the cost for it as well as the cost of new hardware would have been way out of my budget. So, I had no choice but to look at something that would be capable of handling many tasks on inexpensive hardware. I chose Linux.
Now, I have been using Linux on my main machine for some time and never setup Linux as use for a server. I had no idea what to expect. I chose Mandrake Linux because of its RedHat roots and also I needed to be able to use GUI configuration tools and Mandrake has a great many GUI config tools. I had installed Mandrake 7.2 a few times in the past and was also very familiar with the install procedure, but I had never used a server nor a secure install. Other then the need to insert a password for the LILO prompt the install was fairly standard.
What did this secure install give me? At first, I must confess, I had no idea what it had given me. I knew that I had a LILO password and that when it booted up to the Graphical Login I had to type in both the user name and then the password. Whereas with the standard low security you only need to click on the user name and then type in the password.
After some time checking the install out I discovered that there were no services running except what was needed to have the machine boot and be usable. This is a very good thing for those of you that are new to setting up a Linux server. Because of this I was able to do a little research on how to setup each service and the security issues involved with running such services. An important thing to note is that telnetd and ssh as well as any other remote access service are not enabled on this type of install until you start them up.
Over the course of the first day I successfully setup the internet sharing using something called ipchains. This was setup to DENY all packets eminating from external sources and only allow the internal machines to access the internet.
Of course that service is not the only one that is intended for this server. The next thing that I worked on was setting up something called Samba. This is a file sharing service for use on Linux/Unix machines to share files to Windows based machines using protocols that make the server appear to be an NT based fileserver. After nearly a week of scouring newsgroups as to why I was able to see the shares and just not be able to mount them I discovered something that was done wrong. I found out that the shared filesystem should be a seperate file system that can set in the /mnt tree. Since there was no space left on the main system drive I had to install a spare HD that I had laying around.
Installing the drive was a simple task. Configuring it was another matter altogether. I am using the ReiserFS on the machine which is an incredibly fast journaling filesystem. So, I decided that I should partition this new drive with thie FS. Using what I know of Linux/UNIX there is a usefull tool called man. After firing up the following command I was set to configure my new drive:
root@localhost # man mkreiserfs
This command gave me a manual page for the mkreiserfs utility. With this manual I learned the proper command syntax to setup the 3GB drive in about 30 seconds and about two minutes later I was sharing the drive and moved about 900MB of data off my main system. Now, I had my MP3 sharing machine.
I still have yet to configure the rest of the services that I wish to run on my server, but in time I hope to have Apache, Sendmail, FTP and perhaps an online game server all running at once. A very nice thing about running Linux as your server is that no matter what services you need to add or change there is no rebooting required. My server has been up for about two weeks so far and the only thing that I am worried about now is loosing power.
Update: I have Apache installed onto the server and so far, so good. I will be posting the URL soon. I just want to make sure that I have some nice looking content first.
Anyway, the Apache server installed very well and gave me no major issues with the configuration. I was able to use the default configuration file with but a few changes. Once again, due to the nature of the install that I performed I was able to research my problems before they really could effect me.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
cnelzie
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Member: Robert
Location: Madison Heights, MI
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 3 members
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