I am looking to make the switch from a Windows based network to a Linux (preferably Ubuntu, because I used it the most) based one. Currently the network includes a Windows 2003 server which acts as a domain controller and file server, a network shared printer (Canon 2300N) and 7 clients running Windows. Several other Windows-based clients connect remotely via RDP.

I would like to setup a server to act as a domain controller, file server, and (if possible) terminal server. The clients should be authenticated via the server and have access to the files stored on it (via ssh?).

Here are several points that I was wondering about:

• All the clients use Outlook, some of the clients run Quickbooks Pro and another program called Tentant File Pro. I was thinking about replacing Outlook with Thunderbird (I contact, calendar, and tasks) and I know that Wine can't run Quickbooks and Tenant File Pro so I may have to use VirtualBox/VMWare because these applications can't be replaced by native Linux versions.
• I need an adequate backup solution for the files on the server running as a daily backup.
• Should I use webmin to administer the server?
• What antivirus / firewall solution should I use for the server and the clients?
• How can I allow remote clients the login to the server to be able to run applications (Outlook, Browser, Tenant File Pro, etc.) remotely on the server?

What is the best solution for this? And what would be the least painful way of making the transition for the users?


I know this is a lot, but any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Hello and Welcome to LinuxQuestions,

That's quite some post you have for a first one, congratulations! I advise you to take it one step at a time and plan everything carefully and most important of all, document every step you take for reference. It's very easy to loose yourself in the process so if you do get lost you can refer to your notes to check what you have done.

Now for the steps. If you have the possibility I'd start setting up the new network alongside the Windows environment. That gives you the advantage that you can check functionality and differences and document them. Your users will surely have a lot of questions after the migration so be prepared.

Check out this site for a replacement for Windows to have Linux as a domain controller. It uses Calculate Directory Server and comes with all necessary options already installed. You only need to configure them but the documentation is pretty good and complete.

Another possible solution is 389 Directory Server. I've heard good things about it but never used it myself. There's lots of documentation about it though.

For a backup solution there are several options available, going from simple to very complicated. One that comes around very often is Amanda which is very complete although might be somewhat difficult to set up. But once you got it running it just does what it needs to do.

The way you administer your server is completely up to you. You could use webmin or another graphical frontend for that matter. I never used GUI to administer a server, always command line. After some time you get used to it and will appreciate the ease of use and the knowledge it gets you.

Like with most things in Linux, the choice of antivirus/firewall and other security measures is up to you (again). Have a look at some possibilities, see what fits you best and use it.

For remote application sharing and remote access, have a look at NoMachine NX.

Hope that helps. Again, take it one step at a time and don't be afraid to ask questions here. Have fun with Linux and Good Luck!

Kind regards,

Eric

Hi, I am not sure if I can answer all your questions but I'll give you my opinion wherever I can.

Thunderbird is by far the best graphical mail client, so I would start with that , but if you are looking something that somewhat resembles of MSOutlook maybe you should checkout Evolution.

VirtualBox or any other virtual platform is an excellent solution to run those programs you've mentioned, if your machine's hardware can handle such a virtual solution.
If they can't maybe you should try running them using codeweavers excellent emulator. It is based on wine , but it is far more compatible with alot more programms than vanila wine is.

For backup solution Im using Clonezilla's server edition, which takes disc image backups in a regular basis and it uses rsync to synchronize the copies.

If your whole network is going to be linux systems, you don't need an antivirus. If only your server will be running ubuntu and the clients will be windows then you should install an antivirus which is designed to run headless on servers, in order to protect the windows machines. ClamAV is my choice on this one since it is open-source and free.

I'm guessing that your server would be connecte to the internet as well and not just locally so a firewall can help you a lot in controlling the traffic. Gnu/Linux distros have an excellent native firewall embeded in them it is called ipchains...the catch is that it is difficult to configure it manually. That is where graphical interfaces like Firestarter come into play. But since you'll be setting up a server without a graphical enviroment I guess, you need an easy text-based configuration tool. I would suggest Ubuntu's Ufw.

As for server's remote administration, one solution is to log via an ssh terminal session to it and do your work from there (from a windows machine use a tool named putty to connect to the linux server via ssh), or via a webinterface like webmin as you already said.

It is a bit weird to install a linux server so that your client machines could run windows applications on it... Im guessing a virtual server solution like Vmware would help you but I haven't tried it the way you describe.

As for file transfering bettween server/clients, it depends....If the clients will be linux machines, then I would defenetely choose NFS4 for that job and run it through kerberos encrption for extra security (if there is such a concern).
If the clients are windows then by far the best solution is Samba, and you can use a web interface like SWAT to configure it properly.

On a final note I'd like to suggest that you should try Debian 6.0(Squeeze)for your server system instead of ubuntu, because Debian is faster and much more stable as a system , and also if you are used to ubuntu , you will feel like home, since Ubuntu is based on Debian.

I hope that helps, good luck!

I agree about Thunderbird as your mail/calendar client, and as you're already looking at VMware, I'd suggest VMware Server for your Windows apps.

It's free and allows remote users access to the desktop. The only issues are that VMware Server 2 (the current version) seems to have been ignored by VMware soon after it's release, so you may want to use VMware Server 1 instead. Also, the remote console only has a single desktop that all users share, so if you need multiple users to have concurrent access, you may want to use Windows Remote Desktop instead.

For backup, I'd suggest Bacula -- it's a little easier to setup than amanda, and it's every bit as robust. If you don't need something quite so enterprise-grade, then just check in synaptic -- Ubuntu has a ton of backup programs that you can choose from.

There's also a nice Webmin client for Bacula, which brings me to the remote admin of the server. If the server is on a LAN, then you could just setup X and access the desktop via cygwin or VNC (or via X if your own machine runs Linux). Alternatively, you could use Webmin, which tends to have a lot of easy-to-understand modules for configuring common system features, and is less resource-intensive than X Windows.

For file sharing, I agree with kami84gr -- SAMBA for a heterogenous environment, or NFS for an all-Linux setup.

Akin

I saw several posts that recommend running a cron job that executes rsync for the backup and it seems like a simple yet sufficient solution, would this be OK?

I read that OpenLDAP with Samba would be a good alternative to Active Directory, should it be fine?

I was planning on having the users login remotely via SSH into a virtualized instance to run certain applications on the server but it seems (from the responses I'm getting) that it is too much of a security risk so I'll setup the applications to run locally on the client's desktops and access the server data via SSH.

Hi,

OpenLDAP and Samba are a very good alternative to parts of Active Directory. The Calculate Directory Server includes both of them (and a lot more) with scripts that help you configure them in an easy way.

Kind regards,

Eric

OK, I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

Hello,

You're welcome, please keep us up to date of your progress.

Kind regards,

Eric

3 years ago I couldn't get Quickbooks to run if your users are using multi-user mode and the the data is stored on a Linux server. It's a license control issue and they use a program on the server to insure that no more people access the data at one time than there are licenses. Without that server software the workstations can't go into mult-user mode. The package for Linux is supposed to work like their Windows program to check the connections to the data, but it didn't work at all.

After 6 hours on the phone, I and QB support threw in the towel trying to get the Linux version of the QB program to work. They needed to move on and we were all out of ideas. They could never tell me what Linux distro they used to test this or any other particulars that might have helped get it running.

If your users have one Windows machine that is both server and workstation (both multi-host server and multi-host user), then that one machine will have this software installed along side the user software. Because the number of QB users that I had was small, I ended up setting up one low-end computer for the Quickbooks server, installing the the QB multi-host server on it, setting permissions based on the users and computers that needed access to it (including the server grabbing the QB data files for backup), and then installing QB on the workstations with multi-user access. Not pretty, but it got us there.

Also, I have severe doubts that any version of Wine on Linux would handle a QB multi-user access environment. I could be wrong, but Wine has traditionally been challenged just running straight-up workstation apps, much less the timing issues that would be in play with software trying to control multi-user access a network.

All this may have changed (3 years is a long time). Good luck!