Hi All,

I've got an older Pentium (Celeron 466, 128Mb RAM, 4.3Gb & 100Gb Hdd) which I want to use as a fileserver/webserver/firewall and possibly a low use mailserver in the future. I'm not particularly interested in desktop functionality but a decent GUI would be nice. I've got some experience with Linux having ran a 500-user server about 8-years ago but not much experience since then.

I want to ensure that the server is secure and runs reasonably on the low-end hardware.

Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Ngentot!

slackware sounds perfect for you, it's firmly rooted in the past whilst being completely up to date and modern in terms of compatiblity and support, is very stable for servers and fast on older machines. It doesn't force you to even have X if you don't want it, etc.

Thanks Ror,

I was considering giving Gentoo a try... How does Slackware compare?

Cheers,
Ngentot!

Well.. actually... no linux distro forces you to have X... ::rolls eyes::

Sounds near exactly like an old e-Machine I got.. Celeron 466, 256 MB RAM (upgraded from 128), 4.6 GB HD and 200 GB HD...

Oh the irony!
Anyways... the upgrade to 256 of ram helped tremendously.. there is not a single version of linux i've tried that has not done everything I've thrown it's way.. albeit slowly sometimes... I have been happy with Red hat 9, Fedora Core 1, SuSE 9.1 Professional, and Debian 3.1 on this machine... My goal is the same as your minus the mail server.. but file and web is the goal...

I would suggest either Debian 3.1 "Sarge" or SuSE 9.1 Pro (or 9.2 Pro when it's released)... Also.. if you're interested.. Red hat is offering the betas for RHEL 4 freely until the final release... which will be more than 6 months away.. they are providing free updates and everything for it.. That would also be another good choice... RHEL 4 even in beta form is more stable than say.. mandrake

Debian and SuSE are both good though... Debian is more difficult initially with set up and install... bt very easy to keep updated via "apt-get update" / "apt-get dist-upgrade"

SuSE on the other hand is more user friendly.. but both are good choices...

If you need help... let me know... as I have the exact same set up...

P.S. - For Firewalling.. I have found SmoothWall to be incredibly reliable/flexible/easy though it is only meant as a firewall/router.. I have it running as the hardware firewall at my office... Here's the specs: IBM Aptiva, Pentium 200 MHz MMX, 32 MB RAM, 3 GB HD, 2 Linksys LNE100TX v4 NICs...

This provides advanced firewalling, Intrusion Detection, port forwarding, NAT, VPN, etc... for a network with 2 Windows 2000 Advanced Servers, RHEL WS 3 server and 10 Windows XP Pro workstations... and the internet connection is a T1 line... I get great performance out of it too.. I suggest you get ahold of an old box similar to that and try it out.. It just sits in the corner with a power cable and 2 ethernet cables... no monitor, keyboard or mouse.. all configuration is done via secure SSL web server access from a remote machine... www.smoothwall.org

Hey Halo14,

Thanks for your great reply.

You seem to have offered plenty of options... Gulp! Gee, it's a hard decision...

Do you have the box in your office acting as a proxy as well? I was thinking of moving my entire home network behind this new set up for a bit of extra protection (hence the firewall). I've currently got a ADSL modem/wireless router combo with a firewall included, but was thinking of disabling that and using Linux instead. And then, buying a router to sit behind that so that i've a secure local network.

What are your thoughts?


Cheers,
Ngentot!

Smoothwall does include a proxy server.. but not content filtering... i believe you can get an add-in for it that will allow content filtering.. Look into Dan's Guardian...

My recommendation would be to set up 2 boxes... a SmoothWall box AND a Red Hat/SuSE/Debian (your choice) box...

Do you have any type of budget, or are you looking to do all this at zero cost... they may help in the determining factors of my recommendations for the file/web server...

Halo14,

I'm curious why you suggest two boxes? Whats the disadvantage of setting it all up on the one box?

I'm trying to see how much i can set up on a budget and how effect it is. If it's not, i can always add whatever is needed. Ie I'm likely to put another 128Mb into the box to make it run a little better.

Cheers,
Ngentot!

as I said.. the SmoothWall distro is a fantastic, expremely effective firewalling, NATing, Routing operating system... but that's what it does... It's not really a "distro"... it uses the linux kernel with some of the other open source stuff like squid, a trimmed down version of apache for the configuring...

It's gonna be a pain to set up all the proxy/routing/firewalling stuff plus the web server and file server.. and make everything work in harmony.. sure it can be done... but it's gonna take a lot of work...

If you can afford it... get an old 200 MHz box like i explained, and set that up with smoothwall.. then.. again, if you can afford it... check out the Red Hat Professional Workstation $70 or you can get SuSE Professional $90 (free via ftp install but no downloadable ISOs) or Debian (I always use the net-install disc)

Are you starting to see where I'm coming from?? Here's my recommendation for you...

[INTERNET]==>[DSL MODEM]==>[SmoothWall Box]==>[Switch/Hub]

Then you can connect the celeron machine to the switch, give it a static IP and set up port forwarding for port 80 on the smoothwall box to go to the static IP of the web server(smoothwall also does DHCP addressing)..
(This is all very easy through the web based administration for smoothwall...

Actually if you asked around.. I'm sure there's someone with an old crap computer like that who would give it to you for a very small fee.. or some basic computer maintenance.. etc..

If you need more clarification on anything let me know...

-regards