I've got an old Pentium 32MB. The current OS is Puppy 2.0. My dad wants to get rid of it, after I rip it apart for parts. No good there.

What I want to do is make it a server for my small home network. Currently the network has one Windows 98 PC, my Kubuntu PC, and a Windows ME lappy. Also, occasionally my dad brings his Windows XP MC lappy home from work.

What I want for the machine is Samba and CUPS print server, DyDNS or DNS, and DHCP. Currently my ADSL Router/Modem is the DHCP server, but the only computers that use the DHCP are the lappys that use wireless. The stationary desktops use static IP's.

I also want something like SSH for control, and using the CUPS web interface for printing admin. I'm not considering using it as a file server cause it's too small a harddrive and to slow.

I'd use Puppy, but for the fact it doesn't have a proper multi-user setup. I'm thinking of plain-text versions of Gentoo, Slackware or Debian. I'd like some advice, cause I've never used one of the stripped down type systems. I'd also like to be able to integrate the DHCP and DNS servers so that the proper names get assigned the proper IP's.

So, any advice on this would be much appreciated. Especially on Distro, but also on DNS and DHCP daemons and how to run Samba and CUPS.

Thanks Ahead.

something like debian may well be your best bet, you could try gentoo, but with such an old box you'd never want to actually use portage properly as it'd take a week to compile anyway. that said you reaslly *could* run fedora or whatever you want, as you're not interested in X anyway... if you don't install it it can't crash and whine at the lack of resources.

one big thing i'd suggest is using dnsmasq for both dhcp and dns though, it's perfect for your situation and integrates both seamlessly with a doddle of a config file to cover everything.

Okay, thanks for the advice.

I was just considering Gentoo cause I'd heard it was blazing fast to run on old hardware, or any hardware for that matter. Never tried it though. Just Kubuntu, Knoppix, DSL, and Puppy.

I suppose since I use Kubuntu Debian may be the easiest to get the hang of.

Just a question about Samba and CUPS: I know that CUPS has a web interface, but can that web interface control Samba print sharing? Would I need some other kind of web interface like SWAT for the Samba printing?

Besides that, everything seems good. Just one thing, how do I get a basic Debian iso, and how big is one? I don't want a DVD with everything there but optional, just one with the basic Linux, GNU, and apt.

I've figured out what I want to do.

I looked around at the Debian website and found the net-install floppies. Just what I needed.

My first attempt at installing the Debian floppies went alright, but I checked the box that at the first boot that said "Print Server". I thought that was what I wanted, but when it started to download a huge mountain of packages, I quit. With a broken system and no way to get back, I formatted.

But now whenever I go to install, the installation breaks after an hour or so of downloading and installing packages. It says it can't find a suitable kernel in the repositories. Last time I did it, it found a huge list of kernels. After that the install breaks, and I go and format again. Over and over. Why?

Also, once I get the system installed, what kind of packages do I need for CUPS and Samba print serving, SSH server, and DNSmasq? How do I control all of this through a web browser? (SSH only for more low-level stuff that the web server can't do.)

So, there's my plight. I hope I was clear.

You might also check out the "Server Edition" of SLAX

http://www.slax.org/download.php

p.s. - The SLAX server Edition may already have everything you want. But if something is missing there's probably a SLAX module that you just install. That's the neat thing about SLAX. It's very easy to customize.

You said your system only has 32Mb of ram? That's not much. I think SLAX will run out of that (not sure). I can't imagine that Debian would. You're probably better off with SLAX, Puppy, DSL, or some other micro-sized distro.

I tried Puppy, for a desktop OS actually. It didn't have anything that would do for a server. DSL I like better actually, but it wont boot on the old mobo. I'm trying a less-than-vanilla Debian install, which shouldn't run out of memory. I just want to know why it can't download a kernel and what packages I should try.

Thanks for the SLAX suggestion though. I'll look into it maybe.

With respect to your CUPS questions, I'd highly recommend checking out http://www.linuxprinting.org/ if you haven't already. All kinds of good stuff there. Good luck with it

May I suggest Netbsd, although it is not linux. A samba server is easy to setup on them. Plus they netbsd runs really well on old hardware. For SSH logins you need openssh.
Or an alternative to netbsd is openbsd.

Well, I got Debian installed. I just would like to know now how to install CUPS from the repositories. Also, how to resize partitions.

When I try to install CUPS with Aptitude, I first check the dependencies. It wants to install xpdf, which wants and X server. How do I install CUPS without xpdf or xpdf without XFree86?

Also, when the netinstall floppies installed it partitioned the hardrive three ways: root, swap, and home. The home dir is too big, like 700 MB. I'd like to know how to make it smaller and the swap bigger and the root a lot bigger, without damaging data or using a LiveCD. (The no-LiveCD thing is optional though. I've got Puppy 2.0 which includes GParted.)

Also, during the installation I messed up with the hostnames. It is now server1..local instead of server1.local. (That's DNS-style hostname, not regular hostname.) I'm a newbie with this CLI stuff. Would like some kind of interactive nCurses app to help. If that's not available, then some kind of help with the DNS hostname would be much appreciated.



Another thing is I don't know how to configure DNSMasq. How do I get set it up to assign every MAC address on the network a specific IP address, a hostname with the .local domain, and have all the computers on the network automatically, without extra configuration, know to query the DNSMasq server for all .local addresses? Including Windows 98/ME and XP machines.



Too many questions, I know, but they're the ones I have.

Cya.

You might need to download the source then compile it. If the problem still persists then when configuring it. Try something like:
$ ./configure --disable-xpdf-utils
$ make
# make install
If it still doesnt you might have to install x86free but if space is minimal strip it and keep the run level at level 3. Also if space is much of a problem deleting the man pages etc you can save a fair amount of space with this.

For the partitioning you might need to use Gparted but I am not sure if that safely does it. So you might want to backup your root and home partion with with the dd command or mkisofs.

I got DNSmasq working, mostly. I can now get it to assign addresses and names to local machines, and they can resolve and see each other. They can also easily resolve outside addresses. One problem, though; I can't get the gateway to set properly automatically via DHCP. The computers can resolve outside addresses, but they don't know how to connect to them. Manually setting the gateway works, but to do that on the Windows computers requires setting a manual IP address, which works alright on some of the computers but not all of them.

I must have something set wrong in either /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/hosts, or /etc/dnsmasq.conf.
Most likely the DNSMasq file.
Just would like to know if there is a setting in DNSMasq that allows sets which gateway hosts that get assigned an address get.

well the gateway is just dhcp option 3, .e.g "dhcp-option=3,192.168.0.1" in your dnsmasq.conf. remember though that it's totally possible to make a dhcp client ignore whatever parts of the request it wants to.... as is my normal suggestion, you may want to use wireshark on the client to actually grab the dhcp offer off of the wire and look at the data your client actually recieved to see if it does or doesn't contain that option.