Was going to post this in the server portion of these forums. But I still consider myself a newb in Linux.

I want to setup Fedora 9 as a File server for my windows network and as a firewall. Anyone have any good links/info for a good "How to" instructional manual?

And, is Fedora the right choice as an OS to do this with? Or is there one better utilized for server functionality?

Thanks for any and all info.

Ryan

Start here for the file-server portion of your entertainment

http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:Samba

It's written specifically for Fedora. Samba isn't hard to set up, and you should be able to share printers/files quickly with the windows boxes. Firewall is another story...since you want internal devices (I'm guessing), to be able to access the shares through Samba, but act as a real firewall, I'd go with two NIC's. One for your internal traffic, the other for the external (where the 'bad guys' could be.. ).

IPTables can be a bit confusing...you don't NEED two NICs, though. I found this link that may help you

http://fedorasolved.org/

Again, targeted for Fedora...good luck

Great links with some useful guides. Thanks a lot! Will be setting this up when I get home tonight. Thanks again...

No problem...welcome aboard, and good luck.

make sure to disable you GUI!

Why disable the GUI?

I wouldn't use Fedora as a server. Fedora has a one year and a bit support cycle nowadays, so if you want to keep security updates, etc, happening, you'll be rebuilding in a year.

Have a look at CentOS - it's the free version of Redhat, and as such is closely related to Fedora (RHEL5 and CentOS5 are based on Fedora Core 6), so any howtos for Fedora will be relevant, and if you've used Fedora, the whole setup is pretty much the same.

Why disable the GUI? Generally, people don't connect directly to servers (with a keyboard/screen), typically you'd connect to a server vi ssh (typically using a product called putty if coming from Windows), and GUIs just waste cpu/memory and potentially open security risks.

There are tons of howtos around (the samba site (www.samba.org) has some really detailed stuff if the link you already have doesn't suit). Also see www.linuxhomenetworking.org for a range of howtos.

Unfortunately good firewalls aren't simple. There are various GUI/web tools to set these up (webmin comes to mind), but one of the best tutorials I've seen is at http://iptables-tutorial.frozentux.net/