I'm setting up a server, and have just a couple of questions. If anyone could help with them, it would be most appreciated.

1) What distro would be best? I'm currently stuck between choosing Slackware, Debian Sarge, and Debian Woody. Basically, all I want is security and stability, but I know Woody is very dated, and Sarge will soon become Debian's stable distribution. So... I'm stuck.

I DO NOT want a GUI of any kind. I need these things to come with the distribution: SSH, Apache, PHP, MySQL (maybe), and some sort of FTP server... in a nutshell.

2) Partitioning -- I'll be installing it on a 250 GB drive, so I was wondering what sizes to make the partitions (and what partitions would be necessary to make).

That's pretty much it. If anyone could shed some light on this, that would be great.

I'd go with debian sarge with a custom compiled kernel. Also debian's startup scripts are easy to add/remove.

On the partitioning side I would have it split this way

2gb swap
1gb /etc
20gb /usr and /opt
250mb /boot
tmpfs for /tmp
60+ gb for /home
and use the rest to backup /home /etc /opt /boot /tmp . . . I'd write a little script to mount the backup partition, copy them over and change the permissions. Then unmount the partition. I am a bit paranoid but it'd be a nice idea to have such great backups in case you have a problem with an exploit and some "rm -Rf /" fun. My buddy had this happen and he had made a backup script but it kept the backup partition mounted under /mnt and it kept the permissions as they were. He made the script for a bad harddrive but I think it might be a good idea to do it if this is a secure server. If you don't want it then just have the home directory take up the rest.

Oh yeah, one more thing, make sure its differential backups (look at access times).

well go with woody even though it is dated that means that it will be very well tested and secure. as far as partitions you would do well to have two. One for the / and one for home. If you wanted to you could put /usr on a third. but that should not be nessesary. I would put about 50 - 100 on home depending on the size of the content for the server and the rest on /. and never fear if you use GNUparted you can resize if need be. < not easy with out expert knowledge of partions. search for partroot-1.6.6 < boot disk and rescue with parted. good luck debian is perfect

Awesome, thanks guys. If I were to go with Woody, how messy would it be to upgrade to Sarge when it becomes stable?

I believe you just change your apt-sources . . . and viola! . . . but I never tried so you might wanna google.

Sorry to keep asking questions here. Some of my hardware was not supported on Woody, so I installed Sarge. Since I'm allowing anonymous FTP access, would a home partition size of 150 GB and the rest devoted to the root partition be appropriate?

A 100 gb everything else partition is a bit of an overkill . . . I would keep it at 30 gb at the most. Can't imagine you using more than that even if this was an overloaded desktop.