Working on a server

I had to take the day off work the other day to care for some sick kids. In the down time while they were napping, I decided to set up my server to be a Linux machine instead of Win2k. I figure this will help me out. The best learning I do is when I do something and then later figure just what was happening.

So, first thing's first. Boot up with the Slackware disk and re-partition the drive. Next load up Slackware 10.0. Piece of cake on these machines. After the 2 hours installing, it's time to configure.

I found the Shilo is a Geek page on the forums and it's a real nice how-to. This page spells out just how to set up a home server to run Slackware. Spells it out so a newbie can follow easily. I used it to get SSH running. I found that it was already running and just not configured.

Next I used it to configure the FTP server. Once again, Slackware installed this just fine. I just needed to set it up to start up at boot time. So now I don't need to use my CD-ROM in this machine. This will be a headless server, so it's about done. I can access it remotely and I can put files to it. That's about all I need on this.

Next I was going to set up Apache, but his page is written like a tutorial, so next step became setting up sendmail. I've heard horrible things about this, so it was surprising that it was so simple. This is where I found out about:

chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail

It also got me looking at how it boots. I found that this rc.d directory is used when booting. You basically just make whichever daemon executable and it starts at boot.

Now it's on to Apache. Once again, just a little configuring and it's usable. I immediately moved a web page over and I can read it from there. The page would not display the graphic on the page, so I had to do some minor troubleshooting. Turned out it was just a directory spelled wrong. Corrected that and it displays just fine. I'm going to play around with this a little. I may just make a family web page that we can access from home.

The real problem I had was getting DHCP running. I eventually found the Linux Home Networking page. This had a good sample of the dhcpd.conf file. I typed this thing in and it didn't work for me. I had to do a little troubleshooting and googling. Eventually I solved it myself. Turns out I left off a semicolon. But in my defense, the sample did not have the semicolon either.

Final hurdle for now is getting DHCP working at boot up. I posted a note on the forums and eventually got a response. I added the line correctly the first time to rc.local, but I didn't include the &. This puts it running in the background. Now it's working just fine at boot up.

The last things I need to do on this server is get Samba configured and running. Figure out how to make this a home directory accessable from Windows. Get the time outs fixed on this. The first time out is in LILO. It waits for 1:45 for me to pick a linux to run. Too long, so I'll reduce this to about 15 seconds. Next it waits for me to pick a video mode, this is an additional 30 seconds. Don't want to wait, so I'll have to figure out what to do here. I think it's probably just a matter of telling it I don't want to run a frame buffer.

The final thing is to troubleshoot the boot up. It calls out a couple problems. Fails 2 times while looking for the AT keyboard. Don't have one, so have to get rid of this. Also sees the mouse. If I go headless, I don't need this at all. That's about all I need to do to have this fully functional server. Then it's back to the workstations. I also need a new hard drive, so I'll be setting my main machine up as a dual-boot machine. That will be a challenge because of all the stuff in this machine.