OLD server OS Q's.

[Colt45]

Ok. my buddy gave me a cruddy rig the other day and i decided id use it for a server.

http/ftp, possibly something else.

P133 (Might be able to get it to 166 or 200.. been a while since I OC'd a P1.)
1GB HDD (+2gb if i can find my scsi cable)
32MB ram (should be able to find another 16MB somewhere..)

I'm pretty incompetent, so I like X. is it practical to have X on this machine, even with something small like blackbox?
I wouldn't run it all the time..

any ideas would be great..

 

[n0cmonkey]

X would be a bit much.

 

[Colt45]

Yeah, I figured so. oh noes. I've never really used any of the text editors that run in the shell 🙁

I basically suck at life when it comes to linux.

I'd like to configure it so that I can edit the config files for apache, etc via FTP (but only allowed on local domain). this isnt a security issue eh? or?

 

[Nothinman]

With 32M or even 48M any GUI is going to be slow, it depends on if you really want to put up with it or not. What you could do though is installl an X server on your desktop and display the X apps on the server to your desktop. It would still be slow, but not as bad.

I'd like to configure it so that I can edit the config files for apache, etc via FTP (but only allowed on local domain). this isnt a security issue eh? or?

If you really want to edit files locally and then upload them to the server just use SCP/SFTP. If you enable root login via ssh (not a great idea, but more secure than FTP) you'll be able to overwrite any file via SCP/SFTP. Take a look at WinSCP for a Windows client.

 

[Netopia]

If you need a gui-like environment for configing, you might want to load up webmin. Do a google on it. Runs as a page with apache on port 10000 (default). It should help you along without having X loaded.

Joe

 

[Colt45]

Well I suppose I don't need a GUI, I'm just kind of accustomed to it. I usually start swearing a lot when I have to use just the console.

what is a small distro that has apache, ftp, et al, and relatively secure? :-/



Edit: thanks netopia, I'll look into that.

Now i need to find one of those old AT style keyboards.. I know i've got one here somewhere..

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Colt45
Well I suppose I don't need a GUI, I'm just kind of accustomed to it. I usually start swearing a lot when I have to use just the console.

.

what is a small distro that has apache, ftp, et al, and relatively secure? :-/[/quote]

Well normally I would say "OpenBSD". That is realy the best solution for a simple and secure server. But it expects that you know your way around Unix stuff. It has pretty good documentation though and that helps out a lot. I strongly suggest it for something like this.

But there are a veriaty of special-purpose Linux distros that are designed as "SOHO" style server setups and have nice webbased gui tools.

For a example (because this is the only one I can ever remember off-hand. there are a LOT of choices here) is clark connect

There are a few user-friendly commandline style text editors, btw. Check out pico or nano (recommended "easy" editor), joe editor, and a few others.

 

[Colt45]

I had used one of the BSD's in the past.. I forget what version it was. I think i had some documentation though, so it wasnt too difficult

 

[drag]

OpenBSD is very nice, it's worth checking out. Total concentration on security.

FreeBSD is the most popular BSD variant, another popular one is NetBSD.

 

[Sunner]

As long as you can read and are willing to learn, OpenBSD is unlikely to become a problem for you, the documentation is excellent.
Oh and learn how to use vi, it's a PITS in the beginning for someone who's used to notepad or whatever, but once you understand how to use it, it's immensely powerful.

Download gvim and get some practice 😉