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I need to construct a box that will, as its primary function, act as a routing type device that will share out the web for the office. Also this box needs to act as a small web and database server for small web applications ( basically a wiki ) and it needs to be able to provide NFS and ftp functionality.
on top of this it also needs to have the bits ( lib's etc ) to run a VNC server. it should be enough to run firefox a few terminals and at a push thunderbird.
it shold also be capable of running the 2.6 series kernel and have the sysVinit stuff on there.
Can anyone recommend a distro that would be able to do this ( i know most can do all this but most lack access to the 2.6 kernel due to bits missing )
The reason why i ask is because i need to replace a box that does all this already but the distro that on the box ( mandrake 8 i think ) is getting past its useby date and needs updating ( to cover security holes etc ) but the mandrakeupdae program can only go so far.
i am attempting to use slackware 10.1 at the moment, it seems to do everything i need however the startup system sysVinit ( i think its called ) is not present ( the /etc/init.d/service start/stop and /etc/rcX.d/service )
I would really apreciate it if some one could recommend a distro thats realativly easy to get on with.
thanks
antken
p.s. suse actually ranks high on my list ( as i use it quite a lot ) but the install crashes out because i dont have enough memory to begin with ( but it will not use much anyway when its running )
I have thought about BSD many time and for some reason the answer in my head is no. Dont know why though, perhaps its the long hair'd strange person in the corner that rants on about it all day thats putting me off.
Any who, i take it slackware has some parts based on BSD i.e. the rc scripts that are in place of common sysVinit as found more commonly on other linux distros. ( in my experience anyway )
Any who i have replaced the startup system with a sysVinit like one using parts of the scripts that were already in place on the system. its working well so far and i will tweek it more to my liking over time.
The only difficulty i am having now is with three things one being the keyboard layouts.
To save me time i am using the X system to chop and change the config files around. but for some reason the terminals decide to default to the US keyboard layout and not the UK ( which would match what is actually printed on the keys ) This has always been like this even before i modified the startup system, Is there a place where i could set the layout to UK on a permanent basis as this works fine on the default, no-fancy-stuff, terminal.
The second thing is the text editor i am using, vim, is being a bit of a pain. I have altered the configuration to use syntax highlighting ( puts pretty colors on the text for those who dont know )
this works for an orinary user without issue but if I su to root with the same configuration it complains:
'no mapping found'
which, if i am guessing right, is a problem with the paths for the root user, which is kind of linked with the final part of my query.
The path for an ordinary user contains an element that is just a . ( meaning the current directory ) which from a security point of view, as i understand it, can be dangerous and i would like to remove it but there is no profile for the shell in the users profile. obviously this has been set from some place else, but i cannot find where this has been set, does any one know where it is set?
Oh, for the record i am using slackware 10.1 with kernel 2.6.11.10 on this one.
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