Hi everyone,

I'm a computer technician in Sydney Australia and have just gained a client who has a previously implemented SuSE Linux server which I believe is running as a router, fileserver and mailserver.

Personally I'm relatively accustomed to the BSD family, I have a FreeBSD fileserver and building an OpenBSD router and a seperate OpenBSD DNS Server.

What I'd like to know is whether or not there is anything specific I should know about SuSe and where I can find a relatively comprehensive guide to using and administering SuSE.

FYI, the system is SuSE 7.0 (i386) Kernel 2.4.25. I haven't had much of a chance to assess what programs it is running. What would the defaults be under the SuSE OS for the above servers?

I'm concerened about the fact this system is running what I would generally split into at LEAST two computers (fileserver/mailserver and router seperate). But this is what I have to work with until I can build my client's trust in me to a degree that I can either revamp his network or at least split the server into two boxes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Especially anything I'm going to notice VERY different to BSD or hopefully even simillar.

Thanks,
Gsee

edit: I should also mention that I DO know the server is running Samba (not that there are any alternatives for the fileserver) and I'm also relatively accustomed to Gentoo Linux and am soon to be learning Debian.

Thanks again.

Biggest thing you'll miss:

$ ls /usr/ports
ls: /usr/ports: No such file or directory

Egads!

Other than that, just the usual stuff that makes Linux different. I've not run suse in a while, but all RPM distros are basically the same... Yast is suse's config tool, if you're into such things.

Yeah, I can see the lack of the ports tree is going to inflict pain

What are the SuSE standards for the server configs? For example with BSD I'd assume the following:

Fileserver => Samba
Mailserver => SendMail or Qmail
Router => pf

Are they the same for SuSE? I thought that pf was a "BSD-only" program. Perhaps not.

Thanks for the reply!!

Both will use samba for windows file serving. The mailserver could be sendmail or qmail, but I'd bet on postfix (which is superior to both of the former, IMNSHO). The firewall is going to be iptables which is ... well ... It's no pf

You can access the Suse User and Admin Guides here IMO the docs are top notch. Good luck with it -- J.W.