I work for a church, with office staff of about 10 people.

We want to set-up a server to store all the office information, (which is now scattered all over the place).

The idea is to give individuals a partition on the server(password protected). There is database software that needs to be accessed by 5 people( it runs on MS Access). Most of the document are MS Word. Of course you can tell me of a better way to do this than my idea.

Please help by recommending how to set-up this network. I have to submit my info to church leadership. it will save us buy Window Server and 10 CAL (that ZAR 10k).

I have copies of OpenSuse 10.1 and Fedora 11.

Your help is highly appreciated.

Sabelo

First, get copies of something current. The latest openSUSE is 11.3, and the latest Fedora is 14.

After that, you can build a server that is running Samba, and set up the access rules as you wish, for the different users. Documentation is plentiful on the Samba website, and Samba comes with both openSUSE and Fedora. You don't say what the clients are running, but I'm guessing Windows, since you mention Access. As far as how to set up the network, there's no way for anyone here to know...we don't know the layout of the office/environment. But 5 users should be simple...plug them into a switch, and plug the server into the same switch.

And also, it's not "Lunix", it's LINUX.

Thank you T BONE,

I have just downloaded Ubuntu server 10.10 (because its 700mb rather than 4Gb of other).
I will start on working on test network. And I let let you know how it goes.