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Switching Win2k server to Linux tonight.

V

vash

Platinum Member
Well, there has now come a time and need for Linux at home. My basic need is a bug tracking tool and Bugzilla is free! Problem is, all of the documentation to run Bugzilla really requires linux and isn't friendly to Win32 without a few major modifications. My main server is running Win2k Server and hosts basically: file/print services for Win32, DNS (local cache), Terminal Services, FTP, Apache, Privoxy and Squid (no firewall installed, my router only forwards the necessary ports to this machine).

With the exception of Terminal Services (which I won't need), there are the same applications/services on any flavor of linux distributions. My main concern is setting up Samba, then Bugzilla (which will require MySQL). Also, the machine that will now become my "server" will definitely not be taken offline completely. That machine will stick around, just offline until I can get the 40 gigs of data moved over to the linux partition (anyone know of a tool to convert NTFS to ext3). I don't have the free space to copy the 40 gigs around, then back to the Samba share, so I'll have to hold off on doing that until I can backup the data to CDROM (yikes!), or get another 40+ giger to copy the data back over the Samba share.

This should be fun, somewhat educational and defintely going to cause some headaches along the way (if there were no headaches for me, I know I did something wrong). As it sits now, I'm considering using the RedHat 8.0 cd and use their server installation and see how that goes (/me smells n0cmonkey banging my head with a CD labeled Debian). If I don't get RedHat working in a timely manner, I'll probably go Debian or Gentoo (Gentoo is more of what I'm familiar with when it comes to adding and removing packages).

I'll post back here (if there any interests) with my updates.

vash
 
if you go with a redhat "server" install there's a checkbox for something like "Windows File Server (SMB)". Thats what you want for running samba.

After that the config file it ships with (/etc/smb.conf) is extremely well commented and has lots of examples. So you'll probably never need a howto or anything. The bigest caveat I remember is that you have to remmber that a user account for samba is different from a user account for the system. Well, not completely, but my point is you need to use the samba utilities to create accounts (smbuser and smbpasswd or something like that). Also after you install check out /usr/share/doc/samba-version.

*unless you do a regestry hack on your windows machines to make them use un-encrypted passwords, in which case you'll have to change the config file a lot because redhat isn't expecting this.

bart
 
I'm not sure I'd recommend it but you theoretically can use partition magic to convert NTFS to ext2, then a switch from ext2 to ext3 is pretty painless... I would HIGHLY recommend backing up the data first, which of course netgates the need for this conversion, so.........


I'd probably recommend debian, slackware, or gentoo since this is a learning experience, and they should all teach you alot... Gentoo is pretty fun but would take the longest due to compiling everything
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
The last time I installed Linux I installed RedHat.
Click to expand...
Really? Why, in particular, did you choose RedHat?

As it sits now, I just popped in the RH8 CDs I had and the install is pretty much straight forward. I did consider Debian, but being the fact that I already had RH8 made is a pretty clear choice for what I wanted/not wanted to install.

The install is almost completed and I'll report back here as to how well it went for me. By the early morning tomorrow, I plan on getting Samba up, then on to bugzilla.

vash

 
Originally posted by: vash
(/me smells n0cmonkey banging my head with a CD labeled Debian)
Click to expand...

/me smells someone confusing n0cmonkey and Nothinman because of their avatars again...

seriously though, i honestly would go with redhat merely for the fact that redhat is a good thing to be familiar with. they also make alot of this stuff easy to configure with gui apps and whatnot (i guess, i've never done anything more than putz around the desktop in redhat)

really any distro can do this stuff, its just a matter of what you prefer to work with.
 
Originally posted by: igiveup
GUI? Come one, go GUI free!!! Its like running around without any underwear on!!!! FREEDOM!!!!!
Click to expand...

haha 😛

contrary to my post above, i use 2 gui apps (mozilla and gaim - the gimp occasionally)

i'm a command line cowboy too 😛

hm not sure if cowboy sounds good there...
 
I never realized how much memory X can gobble up. I never install it any more, and I consider myself to be a linux n00b. The extent of my knowledge is a mean linux/samba server setup. I tried to wrap my brain around Debian but had to admit defeat until I can RTFM.

#apt-get helpforthisknucklehead

I should put that in my sig....
 
Yes, this is early in the morning, but I'm awake now not b/c of the server install, but b/c of a young baby.

The tale of the linux install is pretty straight forward. Took one AMD 1ghz box, with 512 megs of ram and ran the installation of the server version of RH8 (well the server one that came with the normal RH8 CDs, not sure if this is different than their "server" ISO). Created a few users during install, set the security to medium and added a few users. Reboot.

Get the system back up and immediately try to FTP to the box, no dice. Now try Apache (did select both during install) SSH is fine, but no FTP or Apache. Get into /etc/rc.d/init.d and get Apache started, but I don't see anything labeled FTP for a startup script there. Now I'm trying to figure out which FTP was installed and why it wasn't ran. I find vsftp on the box, but I'm not sure how to start or check to see if the service is working or not. Fine, get WU-FTP from rpmfind.net. Once I muck around with Webmin (yes its lame, but its very easy to admin a box for someone who doesn't use *nix on a daily basis) a bit, I find vsftp and get that to start on the system by default (along with Apache). SMB time.

SMB was giving me a headache at the start. I could SSH to the machine with all the users I created during install, but none of them were accepted as a login for SMB. All new users were fine with SMB, just not the old ones (yes, I did run the Webmin conversion script). No problem, wack the users created during install (webmin will only be ran as root while I'm configuring the box) and recreate them (two users). Now SMB is working fine, so that's a good thing.

Privoxy was cake. Get the rpm, install with the rpm and start from the init.d folder (need to make some changes for a few websites, but the same changes made on my Win2k server).

Today I'll try to tackle bugzilla from rpmfind.net, then DNS caching (don't have two static IPs, can't run real DNS here). So far, so good with the beginning of the migration. I'll just have to refrain myself from running a reinstall of the whole thing, just to "get something working" and try to figure out through more of the documentation.

Here are a few questions:
1. Where can I determine which FTP service has started? With WU-FTP being installed, but not running, I just want to ensure that vsftp is always run and started at default.

2. With that in mind, how do I "uninstall" a RPM package?

That's all I have now for, but I'm sure I'll be back with more. Anyone of a book titles "Converting from Win32 servers to linux?" I know the title is generic, but it could be a very popular book.

vash
 
Originally posted by: vash
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
The last time I installed Linux I installed RedHat.
Click to expand...
Really? Why, in particular, did you choose RedHat?
Click to expand...

It was a work machine and people seemed to know RedHat better than Debian. Well, I got less blank stares anyhow.
 
Originally posted by: vash
Yes, this is early in the morning, but I'm awake now not b/c of the server install, but b/c of a young baby.

The tale of the linux install is pretty straight forward. Took one AMD 1ghz box, with 512 megs of ram and ran the installation of the server version of RH8 (well the server one that came with the normal RH8 CDs, not sure if this is different than their "server" ISO). Created a few users during install, set the security to medium and added a few users. Reboot.

Get the system back up and immediately try to FTP to the box, no dice. Now try Apache (did select both during install) SSH is fine, but no FTP or Apache. Get into /etc/rc.d/init.d and get Apache started, but I don't see anything labeled FTP for a startup script there. Now I'm trying to figure out which FTP was installed and why it wasn't ran. I find vsftp on the box, but I'm not sure how to start or check to see if the service is working or not. Fine, get WU-FTP from rpmfind.net. Once I muck around with Webmin (yes its lame, but its very easy to admin a box for someone who doesn't use *nix on a daily basis) a bit, I find vsftp and get that to start on the system by default (along with Apache). SMB time.

SMB was giving me a headache at the start. I could SSH to the machine with all the users I created during install, but none of them were accepted as a login for SMB. All new users were fine with SMB, just not the old ones (yes, I did run the Webmin conversion script). No problem, wack the users created during install (webmin will only be ran as root while I'm configuring the box) and recreate them (two users). Now SMB is working fine, so that's a good thing.

Privoxy was cake. Get the rpm, install with the rpm and start from the init.d folder (need to make some changes for a few websites, but the same changes made on my Win2k server).

Today I'll try to tackle bugzilla from rpmfind.net, then DNS caching (don't have two static IPs, can't run real DNS here). So far, so good with the beginning of the migration. I'll just have to refrain myself from running a reinstall of the whole thing, just to "get something working" and try to figure out through more of the documentation.

Here are a few questions:
1. Where can I determine which FTP service has started? With WU-FTP being installed, but not running, I just want to ensure that vsftp is always run and started at default.

2. With that in mind, how do I "uninstall" a RPM package?

That's all I have now for, but I'm sure I'll be back with more. Anyone of a book titles "Converting from Win32 servers to linux?" I know the title is generic, but it could be a very popular book.

vash
Click to expand...

1:
If you really don't know which server is started, and if "ps" doesn't tell you anything(that is if the process is just called "ftpd" or something), you could always just telnet to port 21(type "telnet localhost 21"), the ftp server will display a banner of some sort, which will likely give you the server name and version.
Then there's "lsof", if you type "lsof -i" it will list pretty much all active, listening, etc connections of various kinds, just look for the values "tcp" and "ftp" or "21" in the NODE and NAME columns respectively.

2:
rpm -e <package name>
If you don't know the specific name of a package, you can list the entire package database by typing "rpm -aq", then just grep whatever you wanna look for, "rpm -aq | grep ftp" for example.
 
With regards to ftp and such: RedHat uses a server called xinitd, which basically listens for connections and starts the appropiate server, eg ftp, when a connection is attempted. This saves system resources for services that are not often used, however it also can than be harder to determine exactly what is running (since ps, won't display it). It is possible the server version of RedHat dos't use xinitd, but it wouldn't hurt to check :0)

That said, why isn't n0c pointing out how much better OpenBSD is for security than RH? 😎
 
That said, why isn't n0c pointing out how much better OpenBSD is for security than RH? 😎
Click to expand...
Probably because in the real world, and with correctly configured systems, there really isn't much of a difference?

I like Debian better every day. Yesterday I wanted to change my ftp daemon from wuftp to proftp. All it took was a simple "apt-get remove wu-ftpd" followed by "apt-get install proftpd" and I was 99.9% done. The only thing I had to do for configuration was to add a line to the proftpd config file to chroot users to their home directory. No cleaning up after anything, no rebooting, so sweet you can't help but love it.
 
Get the system back up and immediately try to FTP to the box, no dice.

The install just installs things, it doesn't neccisarily tell them to start up on boot.

Get into /etc/rc.d/init.d and get Apache started, but I don't see anything labeled FTP for a startup script there.

As someone mentioned, some services are defaultly setup to use xinetd rather than always be active themselves. wu-ftp (the default redhat ftp server) is one of those. I've never heard of vs-ftp, maybe they finnaly dropped wu in 8.

I created during install, but none of them were accepted as a login for SMB.

See my post above where I explained this.

1. Where can I determine which FTP service has started?

run "/sbin/chkconfig --list"
This will show you all daemons and what runlevels they are set to be running on. The top chunk is independant daemons, the bottom chunk are the ones controlled through xinetd. For instance say you wanted apache to work after you've rebooted the machine, you'd run "/sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 httpd on". The syntax is slightly different for the xinetd stuff, i forget it though so "man chkconfig".

2. With that in mind, how do I "uninstall" a RPM package?
first do an "rpm -qa | grep stringyouknowisinthepackagename"
thats important because sometimes for any given "thing" there are multiple rpms.

Now stop and do this before you do anything else:
Redhat has a utility much like windows updated called "up2date". It is a part of their "RedHatNetwork" offering of services. A basic update account is free for individual users. What it does is you sign up for an account, and send them a basic list of information about your computer (amd chip, x amount of ram), what version you have installed (redhat 8), and a complete list of what packages you have installed. Once you've signed up you run the "up2date" utility, and it does a check to see if your package list has changed, compares your package list to the updated package list for your distro, and allows you to select which packages you would like to up date on your machine (pretty much always chose 'all'). Then it downloads them and installs them (depending on what flags you used and your config files). If you're running X rhn/up2date is easy as pie, just click your way through. If not its "/usr/sbin/rhn_register --nox" and "up2date --nox -u", however since you mentioned a proxy server I suggest you read the man pages for both.
This pages shows the updated packages for RH8. Each one gives a very nice explanation of what the bug/security flaw was.
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rh8-errata.html

enjoy
bart
 
Originally posted by: Bremen

That said, why isn't n0c pointing out how much better OpenBSD is for security than RH? 😎
Click to expand...

Because the thread is about vash getting Linux up and running. Code quality has nothing to do with this. 🙂
 
Here's a quick update for anyone reading this. The linux box is working fine and dandy, but my existing server died! This existing server had numerous months of uptime and I finally gave it a shutdown last night via Terminal Services. This morning, needed some files from that box, so I turned it on. Waited... waited.... Nada.

That box is apparent dead now, not sure why (yet), but its down for the count. Until I get his mess straightened up, I'm off to perorm open heart surgery on my server. Once that machine is back up, I'll be back to the migration (if vital components aren't completely dead).

vash
 
After the hardware mess, I decided I wanted to try Debian 3.0 instead. I did play around with the 3.0 while it was unstable, but never did use it since it was finalized. When I got a new machine back up, I downloaded the compact Debian 3.0 for a net install. So far, so good, I have encountered a few problems, but its worked quite well so far. My favorite part of this kind of distro (I like gentoo for same reason) is the ability to download packages with one simple command. RPMs are nice, but when you need 4-5 dependancies, it can be quite a headache to get the one you want.

Privoxy was a small example of an application that I had a problem with. Searching on packages at debian's website, I did see privoxy listed. When I did a apt-cache search privoxy, there was nothing to be found. But I could download the file and dpkg -i privoxy.deb and all is well. Is privoxy considered unstable? If so, would adding unstable to sources.list allow me to see that package?

There was one thing I did on the box, which was bad: I tried to upgrade the kernel to a more "optimized" one. Good thing I read the warning messages and avoided a reinstall (no rescue disk created here). How do you upgrade a kernel in debian (using the existing management system)?

vash
 
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