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Bungo2000 03-28-2002 10:29 PM

Small Network -- Linux Web, DNS, SAMBA server -- Help/suggestions please!
 
I need quite a lot of help figuring out how I'm going to setup this home network so any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Basically I have this new Mandrake Linux 8.2 box (I am still fairly new to Linux) which I want to host a Web server, with registered URL(s) -- so a DNS server, and a SAMBA server so that the other computers on the network can have filesharing access to it.

The other computers on the network are 1 of each:
Windows XP, Windows NT 4, and Mac OS 9.2

I have 768/384 aDSL (Covad) with a modem that plugs directly into the LinkSys 10/100 Etherfast Hub 'uplink' port.

From this hub I have connected all of the computers I mentioned (including the Mandrake box) and they all have internet access with their OWN IPs (we have multiple static IPs).

I have a problem here as well, as the static IPs seem to be assigned rather randomly, one day my XP box will be xxx.xxx.xx.192 and after a week or two it might suddenly become xxx.xxx.xx.190, and my Mac OS box has taken the .192 adress. All of the computers at present are configured to use DHCP, but I dont really understand where they are picking up the DHCP signal from (I just chose DHCP with default options and it always seems to work). Would my ISP be assigning the IPs to each computer, would the hub somehow be doing this, or what? What I want is to be able to assign the IP of my choice to each computer!

As far as the linux box goes, I presume I cant really start hosting a proper web server until I have the last problem (IPs/DHCP) sorted out... because I have URL(s) that I want to use with the server (yes it will be running 24/7 by the way) and if the IP changes I would have to reconfigure all of the DNS information!

I also need help understanding exactly how DNS works, I already own a URL that I have administrative access (DNS etc.) to, but I am unclear about what the DNS server running on my Linux box will be doing exactly-- and for that matter how to set it up (it is installed and running, apparantly).

There is a lot of stuff here, so if you can give me any tips, suggestions, ideas, etc. I would be forever in your debt... thanks a lot!

Sixpax 03-29-2002 04:37 PM

Did your ISP assign you a range of IP's? or are you just assuming they are static... because it doesn't sound to me like they are static at all. The only way you could have static IP's from your ISP is if they specifically associated the MAC addresses from your network cards to that IP, and that's obviously not happening.

The other possibility is that they gave you static IP's but left it up to you to configure your machines with them. If that's the case, you don't need to use DHCP at all.

mcleodnine 03-30-2002 09:55 AM

Let's just start parting out the problem here.

1. Your DHCP addresses. As Sixpax mentioned you had better check your ISP agreement and make sure you are getting static IPs. My DSL provider uses a MAC address scheme to match an IP addy to a machine. Even though I got static IPs I still used DHCP and got the same numbers for evewry machine. All I had to do was register the MAC addy on their servers.
2. DNS - If you already have access to a reliable DNS farm then you would probably want to either just depend on that or run your own DNS as a slave of the master name server. I can't really recommend placing both of your name servers on your single subnet as there is no failover during a local outage (your servers) or a network outage (your ISP). Look for "DNS and Bind" on the oreilly.com network. The book is available online.

3. http server - Start reading the apache docs after you get the above issues resolved.

4. Samba - It's usually pretty strightforward, but again you should read about it on oreilly.com (I believe there's linkage from the samba.org site).

5. Look into a firewall (or two). I can;t remember the last time I hooked up a machine to the Internet directly. I'd rather chew on broken glass.


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