Well, I hate to ask newbie-ish questions, but I'm off of work for a few days only so have finally gotten around to getting started on reinstalling the OS on my server and I have to get it all done fairly quickly. For normal desktop uses I have quite the familiarity with Kubuntu and Ubuntu and gladly switched over some time ago, but, as a server it gets a little more complicated for me. I'm coming from Mandriva 2006 which automated some of the things I was doing a little better. (I'm switching from it because the Mandriva team seems to be doing a really bad job of supporting older versions and it's getting harder and harder to actually get the correct packages rather than Mandriva 2007 packages that start a mass of conflicts and problems -- and I don't use Mandriva 2007 because, A. every time I have tried it before it was insanely buggy and concentrating too much on things like looks so runs a bit slow even on my main PC which is about two or three scales above the one my server is on, and B. if I get this much trouble with Mandriva 2006, then next year I will see the same problems when Mandriva 2008 comes out...)
In particular, it's Squid and Shorewall that I'm running into troubles with more than anything else. Squid was already preconfigured correctly by Mandriva 2006 and Shorewall started out with a lot already in place and minimal configuration on my part needed to finish it (also, it's a little confusing at times going from a 2.x version to a 3.x version since they made some changes to the configuration parts that I did learn how to work with before.) Basically I just need to get this server acting as a router, firewall, and caching server for HTTP (and preferably DNS as well though I never seemed to get it to work well enough to really do any good before -- at least, it seemed to work, but whenever a site had DNS problems it seemed to not help me at all.) Client systems should be able to access the Internet, receive incoming connections on some ports (just those I select, not all obviously, and etc, all the while enjoying the benefits of the caching and such obviously.
Also, is there anything to automate Samba configuration more? I also used to use this server for file sharing as well as downloading and need to access from systems when SMB works best (eg Windows boxes, an Xbox, and etc.) That's about the only other server task I'll have it doing that I'm less familiar with configuring manually that I might actually need some help with. The rest I've done myself enough times to well understand I think.
Oh, and I need to switch it over to APM, or at least partially to APM. The ACPI support on this ancient system is partial at best. I need at least some things like shutting down to use APM.
So far my status is that I have properly configured both network interfaces and I have Shorewall at least partially set up. It should now properly understand which card is which and on the server at least I seem to be able to access sites and such. In fact, Shorewall MIGHT be mostly set up, but most of the configuration files are still in their original state from the documentation folder and I'm not really sure that it's doing things like allowing clients to actually access the Internet right now. Squid I've also done a few basics in, but I know it's not letting cilents on the LAN run through it despite the fact that I tried to use the http_access parameter to add the LAN's IP range (I get an error page generated by Squid, so I know at least Shorewall's redirect is working.) The error is pretty generic, but I'm pretty sure it's essentially an "access denied" sort of thing (it states in the documentation that you'd get an error about like that, though I admit I forget the exact wording and I'm writing this from a different PC obviously.) Any idea what is going on there?
Also, I'd appreciate any little tipson all of this. As you can probably guess, it has been about a year since I last had to do a complete install from scratch on that server and of course it was a completely different distro based on a different system (eg ultimately hailing back to RedHat versus hailing back to Debian) so I've forgotten a lot and have a few things to learn. (Though I can tell you one thing. When I get this one up and running, I'm making a filesystem backup so I don't end up having to start all over again.
PS. I'm using 7.04 for a reason. I kind of wanted to use 6.06 for the long term support promises, but it would not install (it kept freezing in the installer and generally giving me problems besides -- I would guess it doesn't like really old hardware as much... Certainly I had no end of problems with 6.06 on my not so old laptop that several versions have had problems with but 7.04 can at least somewhat get along with.) I don't really want a beta release on my server though... I don't mind on my desktop where cutting edge is usually preferable, but for the server it needs to be official stable releases as much as possible with only rare exceptions. I don't think I have the time to wait for the official release though. I need that server up and running again, and preferably in the next couple of days.
In particular, it's Squid and Shorewall that I'm running into troubles with more than anything else. Squid was already preconfigured correctly by Mandriva 2006 and Shorewall started out with a lot already in place and minimal configuration on my part needed to finish it (also, it's a little confusing at times going from a 2.x version to a 3.x version since they made some changes to the configuration parts that I did learn how to work with before.) Basically I just need to get this server acting as a router, firewall, and caching server for HTTP (and preferably DNS as well though I never seemed to get it to work well enough to really do any good before -- at least, it seemed to work, but whenever a site had DNS problems it seemed to not help me at all.) Client systems should be able to access the Internet, receive incoming connections on some ports (just those I select, not all obviously, and etc, all the while enjoying the benefits of the caching and such obviously.
Also, is there anything to automate Samba configuration more? I also used to use this server for file sharing as well as downloading and need to access from systems when SMB works best (eg Windows boxes, an Xbox, and etc.) That's about the only other server task I'll have it doing that I'm less familiar with configuring manually that I might actually need some help with. The rest I've done myself enough times to well understand I think.
Oh, and I need to switch it over to APM, or at least partially to APM. The ACPI support on this ancient system is partial at best. I need at least some things like shutting down to use APM.
So far my status is that I have properly configured both network interfaces and I have Shorewall at least partially set up. It should now properly understand which card is which and on the server at least I seem to be able to access sites and such. In fact, Shorewall MIGHT be mostly set up, but most of the configuration files are still in their original state from the documentation folder and I'm not really sure that it's doing things like allowing clients to actually access the Internet right now. Squid I've also done a few basics in, but I know it's not letting cilents on the LAN run through it despite the fact that I tried to use the http_access parameter to add the LAN's IP range (I get an error page generated by Squid, so I know at least Shorewall's redirect is working.) The error is pretty generic, but I'm pretty sure it's essentially an "access denied" sort of thing (it states in the documentation that you'd get an error about like that, though I admit I forget the exact wording and I'm writing this from a different PC obviously.) Any idea what is going on there?
Also, I'd appreciate any little tipson all of this. As you can probably guess, it has been about a year since I last had to do a complete install from scratch on that server and of course it was a completely different distro based on a different system (eg ultimately hailing back to RedHat versus hailing back to Debian) so I've forgotten a lot and have a few things to learn. (Though I can tell you one thing. When I get this one up and running, I'm making a filesystem backup so I don't end up having to start all over again.
PS. I'm using 7.04 for a reason. I kind of wanted to use 6.06 for the long term support promises, but it would not install (it kept freezing in the installer and generally giving me problems besides -- I would guess it doesn't like really old hardware as much... Certainly I had no end of problems with 6.06 on my not so old laptop that several versions have had problems with but 7.04 can at least somewhat get along with.) I don't really want a beta release on my server though... I don't mind on my desktop where cutting edge is usually preferable, but for the server it needs to be official stable releases as much as possible with only rare exceptions. I don't think I have the time to wait for the official release though. I need that server up and running again, and preferably in the next couple of days.