[Nottingham] Local server

[Richard Morris]

On Sunday 26 June 2005 21:57, David Aldred wrote:
> I'm looking at setting up a machine as a server for my local LAN.  Ideally,
> it will provide POP mail services to all users on the LAN, DNS, a
> newsserver, and a web cache.
>
> The DNS, newsserver and web cache functionality looks fairly easy to set
> up: POP mail (collecting mail from my ISP, with spam and virus filtering,
> and sending any mail generated from the A via the ISP) looks more complex -
> I've found several HOWTOs of varying ages, most of which are very involved.
>
> Does anyone know any easy way of doing this, or do I just need to print off
> a big HOWTO and work through it?
>
> (I suppose in a way I'm quite surprised there isn't an 'ISP in a box'
> system, given Linux's acknowledged usefulness in this sort of area).
David,

I don't think that there will ever be a single big HOWTO to cover this, there 
are just far too many options available to you, both in what functionality 
you are looking for and in applications to do it.

My recipe for this is:

1) Pick you favorite distro. I like Gentoo, mainly because I like the way it 
manages packages, but it's also a great way to learn patience, particularly 
in the two days it takes to compile the OS.

2) DHCP & DNS

Use ISC named and dhcpd and have a look at the following page on ddns, it's a 
pain to get working but well worth it when it works. 
http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/ddns.htm

3) Decide on your mail server.........

The first choice to make here is to decide if every mailbox needs a unix user 
or not. I prefer to keep email users and unix users seperate, but the choice 
is again up to you. I'd also consider using IMAP rather than POP.

Have a look at this for a howto 
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Linux_Virtual_Hosting_Server using postfix,, 
Cyrus-SASL, Courier-IMAP, MySQL, ClamAV & amavisd.

You can pick up your incoming email using fetchmail.

4) Webcache

How about squid http://www.squid-cache.org ?

5) News Server

Leafnode is easy, and needs almost no configuration.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/leafnode/

6) Admin Tool

webmin http://www.webmin.com

Richard