Hello

I am looking to setup my old P4 2Ghz laptop as a mail/print server. I currently have crunchbang running on it which I am fairly happy with.
I was just wondering how I would go about striping the system down so that it uses as little resources as possible? or would there be a better
OS for my needs? It will only be used as a mail/print server so i guess there is no need for a GUI but im not sure how confident I am with
only using command line. I have been looking at dovecot for the mail server softwear but im still looking into setting it up as a print server aswell.
This is only a home network so I only have basic needs. Any advise on the subject would be much appreciated.

I'm not familiar with the "crunchbang" so I can't tell you exactly which distribution-specific utility you use to trim the system resource usage down. (For example, I'm using OpenSUSE so I would use YaST). In general, you can go into the /etc/rc.d directory tree and manipulate the symbolic links that are used to start services at boot time. To avoid running a service the simplest -- and least destructive (IMHO) -- way to turn it off would be to rename the symbolic link and make it hidden. For example, to turn off the NFS daemon", you would
Renaming the link preserves it in the startup directory but removes it from the list of steps that the system startup scripts will "see". And it makes it easier to turn the service back on if you decide you need it in the future. (I assume that you're running this system at level "3" and don't need the graphical interface running all the time. If you do, do the above in the "rc5.d" directory as well. However, for a pure server, you would probably be better off running at level 3 and using X Windows by running "startx" only as needed.)

What to turn off? I'd guess that NFS might not be necessary. Also look at any multimedia-related daemons as candidates for disabling. You may find after doing this tweaking that the amount of resources you free up aren't as large as you might think. But every little bit helps. (I think the Linux installers require a lot more resources than the resulting Linux system they create. Slide shows and Tetris games to keep you amused during the install process are so-o-o necessary, you know. :^( )

Hope this helps...


--
Rick

Certainly points me in the right direction

FYI crunchbang is a debian "squeeze" variation

Can anyone recomend good mail server software which will run on a low spec laptop?

For Linux most people use sendmail or postfix. As along as the the laptop is not much older then 7 year, it will run linux with sendmail or postfix just fine. Also look at dovecot.