Re: [Hampshire] Your Set Up

> what's your set up at home?

OK, here goes...

My main server box is a 1.3GHz Athlon. This runs all my mail services, and
most of my web stuff. It also runs the SSH server that is my way into the
network from outside, and runs a seperate network with a wireless AP on
the end. It runs WBEL3.

My main workstation is an AMD64 3800+ with a 21" monitor on it. It's a bit
short on disk space at the moment :-) It runs WBEL4.

My NFS box is a P2/466 (I think!). It's not always powered up. It will be
more useful once I connect it to the gigabit LAN that the two machines
above are on. It runs WBEL3.

My laptop is a 1.2GHz Pentium M. It runs WBEL4.

Those are the useful machines - the rest are experimental:

I've got a 750MHz thing with Asterisk installed on it. I still haven't
worked out what to do with it, though :-). It runs WBEL4.

I've got 2 300MHz Compaqs (and two extra carcasses that I haven't built up
yet). These were put together to find out how to do remote backups. It
proved to be much easier than I was expecting, so these are just used for
temporary servers if I need them. They run WBEL3.

I've got an old LX2 which occasionally gets used as a DAT server (maybe I
should just take the drive out...). It's got 2 450MHz CPUs in it, but I
don't use it often because the fans don't turn. Hasn't actually failed
yet, though. It runs WBEL4.

I've got a Proliant box with twin 200MHz CPUs. I got it to find out about
SMP - that took a good ten minutes :-). That box is pretty much unused. It
runs WBEL3, I think.

I've got a 350MHz lump with almost no memory. It runs Vector Linux. Once I
get a wireless card installed & working, this is going downstairs to the
old lady in the flat below. I might get some more RAM first & put WBEL4 on
it, though.

I've got a Sparc Ultra5, running Aurora. Haven't done very much with this
yet.

I've got 2 Sparc 4s, It's been so long since I've used these that I can't
even remember what distro is on them.

I've got a Sparc 2, but the battery is dead, and I've never got any life
out of it.

I've got a Sparc IPC, running a very old copy of Debian. This was going to
be my DNS box, but the main server has been upgraded a few times, and has
taken over this role.

I've got an Indy carcass, which I've never managed to get any life out of...

I've got a GP2X. It runs GPH's distro, GPL violations an' all :-(

I've got a Gumstix. "Distro" would be a bit of an overstatement - it's
really just a kernel and a copy of busybox.

On top of that lot, I control 2 Dell Poweredge 1850s with twin 2.8GHz
Xeons. One's in Portsmouth, the other in a datacantre in Sheffield. These
don't belong to me, but I do have the root password :-)

I also lease space on a server in Chicago. This runs my high-bandwidth sites.

> do you have a mail server website server?

Oh yes.

> if so what's distro?

WBEL3 at the moment. I keep threatening to upgrade to WBEL4, but I just
haven't bothered...

> I know you could use old one for firewall but I have one in built in
> router.

Most routers don't have much of a firewall; they tend to rely on NAT to do
that job. That's often all you need - but there comes a time when you want
to do something a bit clever (like linking two separate LANs) where there
is no substitute for iptables.

> I am thinking of using old one to host my blog when hosting runs out
> with 1and1.co.uk.

Check your log files to make sure that your ADSL connection will cope with
this - for a personal blog, that probably just means checking that you
don't have some crazy bandwidth cap.

> also install mail server so I can ssh from work or
> where ever I am to use mutt to read emails.

A mail server is pretty simple - just check that you can't be abused when
you first set up. Most distros ship MTAs in a fairly sane state these
days, so it's difficult to cock it up.

You might want to consider other ways of getting at mail; I use a webmail
system (squirrelmail), and it's become my client of choice.

> I can set up all these no problem except mail server as I can't get
> round how to get it working.

"yum install sendmail dovecot" :-)

> Don't understand MX and the likes 1and1
> FAQ on mx confusing as hell and the picture tutorials looks nothing
> like mine when I want to set up MX.

Mail servers are fairly simple, really. What are you struggling with?

> oh by the way it will Debian installed but I am happy to use any distro
> :-)

I've never set up a MTA on Debian. I did do one on Ubuntu. This was how I
convinced myself that I will never, ever use Exim again...

Vic.