new to the forums, and first post, so I apologize now if this has been hashed over someplace. I did a little skimming of forums and threads, and will do more, but thought I would throw this out there..

I am working as part of the messaging team for my organization (governmental). Primarily Windows Exchange, which actually is my forte, but because I have more *nix experience than the rest of the team for the most part, I am getting all the projects that deal with Solaris, and now Red Hat.

We are going to be testing a product for content filtering, that runs on a variety of platforms.. We have a filter server set up on Solaris 9. And a management station also on Solaris. The management station is dog-slow, though, and we have been told the performance and responsiveness is much better on Linux. For a variety of reasons (most decribed in the "readme" thread in this forum, we will be using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS. I have never installed any linux before, tho I have done numerous Solaris and HP unix installs.

so... what are the gotchas? What should I be thinking about that I might not be, yet? This will go on a Dell server, with good resources, so doubt that will be a problme. What do I NOT need to install? Thinking security, especially. but also performance. I will not be installing sendmail or postfix, as the application we are testing installs it's own version.

Just looking for any thoughts or suggestions that could make things easier my first time through..

Mossless

Can't understand why Solaris being dog-slow.

Being a test box, you can install everything, just dont use what you don't need. No idea what you will need. Red Hat has great docs. Look in them to see how you stop services you don't need running. See service and chkconfig. Also, you didn't mentioned anything about running RAID or not.

Red Hat is great and by buying AS, they can lead some support. With the numerous Solaris and HP unix installs, you shouldn't have any problem.

It shouldn't be too hard to install. IMHO, RH's installer(anaconda) is probably the most straight-forward installation system that I've used(Win/Lin/Sol/FreeBSD). The only thing that I could think of that would be something to think about ahead of time, would be how you are going to partition it. (Like -X- brought up, do you want to use software RAID or LVM - partitions that can easily be resized). It's much less of a pain to set that up the way you want it during the RH installation than doing it after you have installed everything and have data in the partitions. Using atleast LVM would be a good idea. LVM is somewhat similar in what it does to ZFS in Solaris Express without the software RAID stuff. If you do use software RAID or LVM, you might need to but /boot on a separate partition outside of the LVM or software RAID stuff depending on what level of software RAID you are using.

Thanks for the replies..

I will be using raid.. but not sure just how I want to set that up yet.. It is a Dell box. 1650 I think is what they are going to give me to use.. and I have the Dell disks to automate the install. I think there is a Redhat option in that.. so I will have an array set up and then do the install.

I don't know why the Solaris is slow, either.. but it is.. The management tool is web based, using an apache install, and when refreshing screens, etc. it takes forever.. This is on a SunFire V100. The company told us the response time is better with Redhat, so we will give it a test..

I'm hoping the install goes pretty straight forward.. then I will have to look at hardening it for an enterprise environment.. Locking down anything that might not be used, etc..

Anything to look out for in the hardening process? Any good guides out there that I can follow?

Mossless

As mentioned by imemyself, Red Hat setup/install is about as easy as it gets. You can setup the RAID through the GUI install process. The first time I setup a RAID in Red Hat was through the GUI with no instructions, just the on screen notes, but had done RAID in Slackware through scores of commands, so RAID fundamentals is a plus. For what you are doing, Red Hat has GUI for about everything. Look in the menu for services, and firewall. For more firewall control without dinking with iptables, use Firestarter.

All I can say is look at the docs, install/start installing it, and come back when you get stumped. Trying to describe all the processes you need without you having looked at it, is kind of a moot point. Red Hat has docs for pretty much everything. I sure the forum will kick in when you send up the flag.

Ok.. Thanks for all the comments so far.. I appreciate the willingness to help. And I am obviously new to this particular arena.

I have RHEL4 installed. Could not use the Dell OpenManage process to do the install for some reason, but just installing from the RHEL disks went fine. Unfortunately, I accepted the default partioning but that probably doesn't matter at this point as it is a test server anyway. The underlying RAID 5 makes things look like just one hard drive anyway.. I'll deal.

But.. to continue, I need to access this box remotely for configuration and application installs. I can Putty to the box from my windows workstation, and all is well. But is there a way to get a graphical/remote setup? I remember long ago that I used a shareware program that would graphically connect to the XWindows running on the server, but I can't remember what it was. Basically gave me a window on my windows workstation that acted like the CDE window if I was local. Since this server is racked in a data center, it is just not feasible for me to be standing over there when I need to access it. I can work through the command line approach, but would like both options if possible..

Suggestions?

Mossless

You can enable XDMCP on the server, and install Cygwin on a Windows box, and use Cygwin as a client to the Xserver on your server. It might be better security wise to tunnel X through SSH or something else to make it more secure. That would probably be better if you just want to run individual apps(as opposed to the whole desktop enviornment). From the sounds of it, that's probably what you used in the past. You could also use VNC, and I've heard good things about FreeNX but never have used it myself.

I'd also do it via VNC.
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/006apr05/features/vnc/

Then use your browser or an VNC viewer.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have not installed VNC, as part of the intent is to keep it as minimal as possible, in order to lock things down adequately, etc.

I was able to finally figure out how to tunnel the xwindows through ssh. I'm using an old version of xmanage that I had used before.. probably more efficient and uptodate methods, but it is working so far.

I have the application installed now, and can use it's load of apache to do the management of the app through their web page. But, I believe I have apache loaded through the basic RHEL install as well. Their app calls processes located in the directories for the app, so it is not calling the default apache load. Can that be removed safely, for security reasons?

I also downloaded and installed Bastille, but not sure ran correctly. This is an aid to harden the basic linux install. Anyone have experience with it?

I'm finding the GUI interesting, but because of my previous background in Solaris from the command line, doing most things there anyway. One thing I noticed, tho. When in the GUI (gnome) if I go to the network icon, and click on windows network, I get a ton of icons. We are on a fairly interconnected environment. Is this using the windows browser protocols? Where is it getting a list of all these other domains and workgroups? I assume SAMBA is loaded, but I thought I had indicated NOT to load that during the install. Is the client enough to browse the network like that, even tho the server is not installed? I'm guessing the SAMBA client got loaded anyway, despite my install choice.

Sorry for all the newbie questions here, but still wading my way through.. You all have been most helpful! thanks.

Mossless