File Server for PC and Mac
 

I'm trying to put together a cheap reliable file server accessible to both Windows (95 upwards) and Mac (OS9 upwards). I would like secure logins customisable to various directories. Can Linux do this yet, can anyone recommend the best way to approach this, bearing in mind I'm a newbie to Linux?

Thanks

Yes to both - Samba for Windows and Netatalk for MAC. Don't know much about Netatalk but I use Samba as a PDC for my Win9x/Win2K machines - they log in and only see their own data.

As regards security same thing as applies to Windows - make sure only LAN can see your network - don't give access to the internet.

Thanks for the information. In the past I've been playing with RedHat, but have been reading alot today about Slackware. Do you have any recommendation which way to go?

RedHat is a bit more user-friendly than Slackware, and if you are new to the scene then you may want to stick with RedHat. However, SuSE has an easy-to-set-up wizard for Samba through YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool), and it works everytime. The website is www.suse.com

As a SuSE user of long standing I can recommend that - I use SuSE 9.0 with Samba 2.2.2.8a as my fileserver - SuSE 9.1 uses Samba 3.x and is a bit new for me to move to it on my main system yet - I have tried it and found a few issues - one with the Samba client so if you do go for SuSE 9.1 make sure you get the online updates immediately before installing Samba.

Good luck.

Are there any limitations to the numebrs of users or the number of concurrent connections that anyone knows about?

The only limit will be your system resources.

Exactly so - each user logging in will use up a small amount of CPU/memory on the server - but there are no licensing or similar issues to limit the number of users.

What else they use is dependant upon what they are running. Obviously if you have 100 users simultaneously transferring large amounts of data to/from the server there will be an increase in load so the higher the performance spec for the server the better response. However, linux being a true multi-user operating system from the ground up is very capable of being used even with 100% CPU utilisation. In fact to test this I am writing this whilst a user is transferring huge amounts of data with CPU utilisation currently sitting on 100%

OK I think I have enough to go on. Thanks. One last thing, does anyone know of a good book/pdf/website that lists all the 'dos' command for Linux. I have a couple of machines I look at where I have to phone support just to get talked through changing the IP address using the command line (the systems don't use a GUI at all. Any ideas?

linux in a nutshell by o'reilly is a good reference book - commands organised by what you want to do.
Try www.tldp.org for all sorts of how-tos eg the bash guide for beginners is probably a good start.
For samba www.samba.org is good.
When you get your distro there will be 'man' pages and docs with it which will get you most of the way with configuring.

Thanks for your help everyone. I'll give it a go