[Techtalk] A few questions

[James]

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002, kansas_kennedy at phreaker.net wrote:

> Hello everyone:
> 
> I have got a few questions, I hope you'd help me.
> 
> We are considering putting up a centrals server of all Windows machines. 
> The architecture is like this:
> We have 40 machines in a LAN and we want to use W2K (NTFS) in every 
> workstation and Linux (RedHat) in the server. 

A normal enough setup; bear in mind the use of NTFS on the workstations 
has *NO* effect on the server: it doesn't matter.

> We actually want a mail server,

Included with RedHat.

> a secure internet browsing (Open-SSL),

Do you want to serve an SSL WWW site (i.e. have https://www.example.com/) 
or to encrypt the traffic from your client machines browsing the WWW? For 
the former, Apache can do this. Again, I think RedHat now ships with such 
a server; if not, installing Apache+SSL isn't very hard.

> one local webserver,

Apache, included with RedHat.

> a central firewall rule-set applicable to all the W2k machines, a

ipchains/iptables; again, included with RedHat, just needs configuration.

> central virus scanner,

Not included with RedHat AFAIK, but there are one or two such products 
around.

> a central storage capability,

Samba + RAID array on the server; use a journalled filesystem (ext3 is 
probably best; ReiserFS is faster, but new and a bit "rough round the 
edges" IMO, while ext3 uses the tried-and-tested ext2 code.)

> a capability to administer basic W2k MMC commands from the central
> server

No.

> and NATting.

ipchains/iptables. Or set up a small dedicated PC (486 or Pentium would 
do) running something like Coyote Linux, for simplicity.

You'll probably also want a DHCP server (autoconfigure IP addresses on the 
clients) and DNS. Both are included with RedHat.

> Remember the word NTFS!!!

Using NTFS on the clients doesn't affect the server at all.

> Can this administering be done, is this possible?

You can set up a network like this, but Linux can't run MMC or be 
administered via it as far as I know; MMC is a Windows admin tool, while 
Linux has its own.

> I am also looking for a Linux version of AutoCAD. That is, our AutoCAD is 
> currently loaded in the WinServer and being shared among pc's as per 
> license agreement.

You can continue doing this unaffected, as long as AutoCAD is just living 
on a shared directory on the server; if you want to run a Linux AutoCAD 
clone, you'll want Linux client machines instead of Win2k.

> Our Engineers will also be working on bigger project chunks simultaneously. 
> That is, they will divide the project in different parts and work in their 
> individual parts and later on merge the whole thing. So, I'd also like to 
> know if this is possible.

That's purely an AutoCAD question, as far as I can see - any AutoCAD gurus 
here?

> Mainly we are considering Linux over Windows for cost minimization, 
> security, robustness above anything else. Sorry I'm kind of green in Linux 
> till now. Actually stuck in a world of setting up Windows Workgroups :-) 
> Can you guys suggest me something to dip my nose into?

Setting up a Linux server to do all the jobs you describe (except AutoCAD, 
which runs on the client machines rather than the server) and running MMC 
is fairly straightforward. I doubt you'll be able to replace AutoCAD with 
a Linux clone, though, and MMC is Windows-only; to administer Linux 
server, you can use several different tools.



James.