Just need some advice.

I work at a small company with 15 computers which log on to a windows nt server. This server authenicates the users name and password...then runs a script to map to their network shares.

Would linux be a possible solution to replace this aging windows nt 4.0 server with?

Will I be able to still authenicate from windows 2000 workstations?

Also, we are currently running microsoft mail postoffice on the windows nt server. (IN HOUSE EMAIL). Would I be able to configure some type of interoffice mail?

Thanks,

Brian Z

Hi

Samba is the package, can be configured as a Primary Domain Controller and setup for File and print sharings as per your NT server...

www.samba.org for more info.

As to you mail question, can't help, don't know of any linux mail server that has a microsoft front end except "Lotus Notes", but guess this will be OTT for your setup.

Hi mrnikeswsh,

These sort of tasks are things that Linux excels at. In addition to Samba for all your file sharing/printing/PDC needs, there are Open Source apps which will do mail for you.

You will probably need to use several apps, each of which does one task well for mail. For example, postfix or sendmail can manage mail for you. Fetchmail can collect mail from an external pop3 server. Numberous POP3 daemons (e.g. qpopper, vm-pop3d) allow your users to collect POP3 mail from a local mailbox. Procmail can process mail (e.g. distributing mail to different mailboxes from one external source, applying spam filters). Most of these will come with your Linux distro.

If you want something more like Microsoft Exchange, SuSE Openexchange Mail Server has the functionality at a significantly lower cost (not free though).

Configuring a mail setup like this is not trivial, but neither is it too complicated. You'l find numerous how-tos on the web.

Sounds great... I'm not looking to re-invent the wheel or anything. I just wanted to get the ball moving on something. We are a small company with just 1 NT 4.0 server. (Basically a file server).

This machine is starting to get up in age.....and I'm not sure we fell like spending mucho DOLLARS on windows 2000 server....or additonal licenses.

So..I'm leaning towards Linux....(MANDRAKE 9.2)

I will have to try this..... Can you explain in more detail about some of the email.

FYI we use IPOWERWEB as our hosting providor. ... Our email addresss are xxxx@ourdomain.com. Currently they are being deliverd to each computer.

Do you say that I can have my "SERVER" gather these emails then distribute them to each user after applying some spam filters?

BZ

There are lots of ways you can do the email stuff. Once you start playing with the tools, you'll get a feel for what you can do.

Here's one example :
a) fetchmail runs as daemon on your linux server and goes to collect the mail for each user, putting it in their mailbox.
b) fetchmail passes collected mail onto procmail, which can do some post-processing. Procmail is one place you can put spam filters (e.g. spamassassin, bogofilter) just by calling them in the procmail configuration file.
c) Having been processed, mail is sitting in local mailboxes on the linux server (you create a Linux user for each mail account, but set the shell to /bin/false so they can't log in, just collect mail). Your POP3 daemon which requires no configuration at all allows people to log into the Linux box just like any other POP3 server and collect their mail.
d) If you want people to be able to send mail between themselves, and out to the Internet, postfix is easy to set up for this task. For local mail routing you may need postfix to call procmail.

So in total we have the following software :
- fetchmail (configuration file is ~/.fetchmailrc)
- procmail (~/.procmailrc or /etc/procmailrc)
- postfix or sendmail (postfix config file /etc/postfix/main.cf)
- a POP3 server such as vm-pop3d or qpopper.
- spamassassin and/or bogofilter anti-spam software

All this software comes on the standard Mandrake 9.2 CDs.

The best place to start is to look at the websites or manpages for the different software packages. A quick google should sort you out. Come back if you have any questions, of course - the manuals don't always make sense.

you da man!


Thanks Bro!


BZ

I've not tried this yet but SAMBA version 3 is supposed to come with some migration tools to move an NT4 hosted domain without interruption. Won't have to touch the 15 PCs at all.. I assume it just works by becoming a backup domain controller and then you switch off the NT box and it takes over.