[SWLUG] Re: Newbie alert!

[Glenn Booth]

Hi,



On 8/15/05, Keith Edmunds <keith at midnighthax.com> wrote:

> In terms of learning Linux you could do worse than either setting up LFS 
> (Linux From Scratch) or installing Gentoo by hand. 

Scary, but a good idea.

> Make sure you use Linux as your main, ideally only, 
> desktop; set yourself tasks (eg, set up a mail server, set up a web 
> server, set up SMTP authentication, set up Samba, set up NFS, set up 
> Samba using LDAP, set up a firewall, set up ssh keys, set up a VPN, set 
> up IMAP and POP3 servers

I've actually done most of those things at one time or another, plus
a few more (like weird kernel configs to support odd hardware), but
that brings me to the crux of my problem. When I have needed (for
example) a Samba server,  I've built one, and got it working. But
I always end up compromising, and never quite thinking I've done
it "right". In the case of Samba, I ended up chucking away most of
the security to get it to work the way I wanted, which just felt  wrong
to me. As for setting up a firewall, last time I did that  on Linux was
when ipfwadm was trendy!

The same happened when I needed to configure BIND. I got it
working, but I never quite trusted it. Same for Apache. I guess I'd
like someone to show me just once how it should be done, rather
than me keep hitting it with a figurative spanner until it  eventually
does what I want.

> - I can provide lots more challenges if you 
> need them!).

thanks, I'll get back to  you <g>.

[snip lots of good advice]
 
> In brief: get the experience followed by the qualifications. For what 
> it's worth, I have no Linux (paper) qualifications at all, but I make a 
> living working solely on Linux (well, Windows to a Samba server 
> sometimes). It can be done.

I suppose I have quite a bit of experience, if you add it all up, but it's
scrappy, and I've forgotten a lot of it, plus it's been on a multitude of
different distros. I sort of figured that doing a course might get me back
up to speed.

Thanks for the  helpful advice.

Regards,
Glenn.