At 00:40 05/10/2006, you wrote:
I was just speculating how hard it would be to turn my Fedora
box (which is up all the time) into the central system all
my other computers go to for information (smtp, dns, imap, dhcp,
etc).
This is something I also fancy doing sometime, but I would question
whether Fedora is the best distribution for the purpose. What is
needed IMHO is something that once set up will be extremely stable
and won't need to be upgraded for a long time. Because of the
relatively rapid fire release cycle of Fedora it is great for the
desktop where you want all the latest stuff but not necessarily for a server.
Ubuntu Server is currently promising, I think, a five year support
period, so that is the one we are currently looking at for a new
engineering department server at work. I've got it experimentally set
up on what used to be my desktop PC, serving files and some queues
for networked printers via Samba. I've not tried setting up email
services yet - that's also something I want to try to learn to do in
the future. I'm keeping notes on what I've done to it so far to set
it up, if you want to see these just email me off list and I'll send
the file over to you.
Another very important aspect of the project, I think, is what
hardware you are going to use. A home server does not need, to take
the other extreme as an example, the same sort of processing power as
Amazon. I've got a server running subversion for my software
development and other work, using a Via mini ITX board set up as a
headless server. I don't know where in the world you are located but
judging from your spelling of the word "centre" (No, no, please don't
start that one off again!) you are located in the USA. In the UK you
can get dual LAN socket (for firewall/router), low power, fanless
mini ITX boards from here:-
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#epiaek
It is important to choose the smallest machine you can to reduce
energy consumption, especially if it's going to be running 24/7. Plus
with a fanless motherboard the processor is included in the price,
and there's one less moving part to fail.
Hope this helps.
Dave F
