Scott Fitzgerald wrote:
could also run a cgi search script, I would be able to have a intranet with
customized content and a search engine that worked only for me. So, I
would like to set up a box and start it out as a web server (intranet
style.)
You would run apache and a search engine like aspseek.
I'm thinking of making this the "heavy box" that does a lot of
daemon stuff. So I think, I could put exim here, and cron at atd, and then
take them off my desktop system. (actually, I use retchmail, cron, popfile,
and exim all in tandem to get my mail.) I also envision myself running any
compiles on the heavy box, while just running some stupid games on my
desktop.
Don't overestimate the resources daemons need. They do nothing MOTT, so
it's questionable if running a second box is worth the power consumption
and spending the work to maintain it. Almost everything of what they do
can be made to be done while your asleep, anyway.
I'm still running a server and a workstation at home, and my reason to
go that way was like yours, getting the load off the workstation. But
that was many years ago. Nowadays computers are fast enough not to need
that, and as soon as I find the time to do it, I will migrate some data
and fetchmail to my workstation and retire the server.
But if your going to run a server, you may want to run exim with virus
scanning (clamav), SPAM filtering (spamassassin), cyrus with smartsieve
and a webmail client like squirrelmail on it and to access your mail via
IMAP. You will definitely need to run a nameserver, too. If you set it
up right, you could make it so that you can access your mail from any
internet connection. You may also want to add an FTP server to exchange
files from anywhere and run squid to speed up your web browsing. You
would do the programming, gaming, browsing etc. on your workstation and
access your mail from there then --- that is what workstations are for.
Also consider that you will have to do backups, preferably to tapes with
amanda.
Once you come to think of enabling remote access, you will start
worrying about securing your system and maybe want to have a third box
for better security.
It's quite some work to set all this up, and to maintain it. It's still
all very basic stuff to begin with, and of course you can do all of that
on your workstation. Think about if your really willing to spend so much
time into these things. But it's surely great for learning :)
If I yank exim off my desktop box, and run something detached, how can I
set it up so any error report will try to go over another box on the
192.168.0.* network?
Don't try that. You can/will want to use your mailserver as a smarthost,
and it's easy enough to send all syslog output to the server. But
removing an MTA will seriously brake things. Configuring exim is fun,
anyway :)
Also on email, would it make sense to
ssh-or-telnet-or-remote-X onto the heavy box for the email work?
It depends on the MUA you plan to use. If your going to use mutt, you
would be using maildir to store the mails, and there's nothing against
it except the consideration where you want your mails to be stored. If
your going to use IMAP, I won't do it with mutt, but with the Mozilla
mail client on the workstation, and with a webmail client from remote.
I'm using mutt with xemacs as an editor on my workstation since long,
storing mails in maildir format. The mail store holds about 4 GB of mail
yet, collected over 8 years or so.
hoping that there is some setting in the /etc directory that can just allow
me to say "use the smtp at 192.168.0.1" but I am not sure. A lot seems to
lean on that concept.
There's no such thing. Stay with standard Debian packages and with the
proposed way to set things up (except for configuring exim which is a
horrible mass since exim4) where ever possible. If you don't, you will
loose the overview of your customizations and get into troubles with
updating and maintaining the system too easily.
I also wonder about telnet, I know that telnet sends passwords "in the open"
so it is bad to use it online, but is it still considered safe for a
home-based network?
ssh is more convenient.
Also, I am a dial up user only considering DSL. If I went DSL, I would buy
a firewall plus switch, but if I stay with dial-up, I might consider a
seperate k6 or P-one box running ip-masq as a firewall.
Is your download speed sufficient to download like 180 MB for the
installer CD image, another 500--600 MB for each box your going to set
up and then like 250 MB each week or every two weeks to keep them up to
date? Mine was not with dial-up, and that created the need to get DSL.
Of course, there is the background worry that some application I try out
down the road really expect cron or exim on the local machine, and won't
work right without it.
Don't mess with these things :) It's just not worthwhile. If your
bothered by the memory consumption of exim on your workstation, you
could run it from inetd, but I won't recommend that. The overhang of
starting exim for each mail to be send anew is imho more than running it
as a daemon.
GH
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