Ok, ok yes I know this gets asked way to often, but I am lost and need some help. I am in the process of seting up a small cluster of home servers, mostly to mess around and learn on. I want the servers to be stable and secure. I have them running Mandrake right now, and am looking for something that does not try to hold your hand as much. I have been contemplating putting Gentoo ( I really would not mind the install, if it is really worth it) Debian, or one of the BSD's. My skills are some where between beginner and Moderate, but I am learning evry day, and dont mind taking the time to learn. I am really looking to gain the experience I need so that one day I may be able to move some of my client's servers to a *nix type OS, but want to make sure I know my stuff first. Thanks for the help I'm sure I will get.
*nix suggestions
- Thread starter jonmullen
- Start date
With debian I think you will learn pretty fast... I like to start with the minimal install and then add applications as I need, rather than the RedHat/Mandrake approach of starting with LOTS of stuff installed.
Whichever distro you go with in the end, update your kernel
OK, so if I do go Debian, which CD's do I need to download, surly U don't need them all for a minimal install.
I take it these just download the packages I need then installs them. What makes these so much easier to install? Remember I am wanting to start small and just add packages as I need them, the bloat is what I hated about Mandrake. Also since I'm going to have more than one server, I am thinking it may be easier to just download the ISO's that I need, but when looking at the downloads there are 7 surly I dont need like 4 and 1/2 gigs for a base install.
The install process for this is basically: boot, choose kernel modules you need, choose a source to get packages form, wait a bit, reboot, and then you have a VERY minimal system. From there, "apt-get install programname" and add packages as you want them. The base install is well under 100 meg.
As someone speaking from very recent experience, although I didn't quite check the size of my initial "net install" base system, I'm quite sure it was less than 80 megabytes.
I wouldn't even bother with the ISOs, because debian stable is so extremely oudated, but with a "net install" disk you can bring up your net connection after the system boots and use that the install the rest of your software. Although since you're setting up servers you probably won't need the latest kde +openoffice, so you will probably be just fine with debian "stable" and the security updates that are available for it.
As for 4 1/2 gigs for a base install, you can't be serious. Just because the packages are availbable doesn't mean that you have to install them. Not even Mandrake takes up that much space for a base install.
But if you don't like the size of the ISOs try using jigdo. I haven't tried it myself, but it seems like a really convenient way to have the same exact set-up on multiple machines, only without the CD switching
.Thanks for the jidgo suggestion, I may try it, right now I am doing to net install, as for the 4 1/2 GB I know I dont need all of that, I was being sarcastic, I was looking for some suggestions, of which CD's had most fot he stuff I need, but thanks for your help.
Well I am looking for some reason's why it might fit my neads. I am not trying to start a OS flamming war I'm just looking for suggestions to my situation.
Oh OK, sorry
. The only thing that I can think that would make FreeBSD better than debian is stability, but for all intents and purposes debian (especially stable) is rock solid. However if you want fortress-like security (for a bit more work than setting up debian I should think), then you might want to try OpenBSD.Originally posted by: wizardLRU
But if you don't like the size of the ISOs try using jigdo. I haven't tried it myself, but it seems like a really convenient way to have the same exact set-up on multiple machines, only without the CD switching
I never mananged to get jigdo working (at least under windows)...
BSD is the OS for people who want to be special... who used to run linux but now linux is too mainstream for them.
I could never get it working under windows myself. Must be some kinda conspiracy
.For FreeBSD and NetBSD, yeah I agree with you, but OpenBSD is a different story.
EDIT: But then again for some special hardware, I can think of a reson to run NetBSD.
IMO Gentoo's performance increases arn't worth the hours and hours you put into compiling a system.
That's a bit of an oversight.
You're just asking to be flamed.
IMHO, OpenBSD has about the best security you can get (of course it's useless if you don't know how or don't want to keep up with the security updates for the software - like apache - you run on an OpenBSD system), and NetBSD is extremely portable. I've never figured out exactly what FreeBSD wants to be. For applications where OpenBSD or NetBSD would not work well (say, when the need arises to have an open source OS for a system with strange hardware, or to run proprietary applications which are almost never provided for BSD), I choose some form of Linux (in practice, then, Linux is what always gets installed on my desktop "workstations"). Debian is my current favorite distribution; though I haven't tried Gentoo yet, I have a feeling that I'd like it, if only I had broadband.
cleverhandle
Diamond Member
- Dec 17, 2001
- 3,566
- 3
- 81
Perhaps a bit beyond your current comfort level, but (if you want Debian) a good exercise might be to set up one server as an apt-repository. That would roll together a lot of skills into a nice project that would make future tinkering with the other machines much faster.
Ok well I have debian up, I am going to see how I like it and latter on I may take at shot at a BSD. But first I have a stupid question.
In Mandrake whenever I would ls it would use color to help distingues types of files. But now it does not, I tried
$ls --color-always
it would work for that once then if I
$ls
it would go back to black and white
In Mandrake whenever I would ls it would use color to help distingues types of files. But now it does not, I tried
$ls --color-always
it would work for that once then if I
$ls
it would go back to black and white
cleverhandle
Diamond Member
- Dec 17, 2001
- 3,566
- 3
- 81
cleverhandle
Diamond Member
- Dec 17, 2001
- 3,566
- 3
- 81
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