I have written a detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a SUSE 9.2 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). In addition to that I will show how to use Debian’s package manager apt on an rpm-based system because it takes care of package dependencies automagically which can save a lot of trouble.
Ummmm … this wasnt much detail in the article. All it included was step-by-step installation method as to how one goes about obtaining these particular software. I would’ve wanted to learn a little more as to how to setup the SSL side of the webserver or a little more on configurating POP3/IMAP.
Think it needs a LOT less screenshots, and more text.
i did only glance at it but running mod_php and mod_perl wouldnt not be good for any larger than a small home server.
he did mentions su_exec but then php and perl would haveto run as cgi instead
suexec is the _answer_ for about 80% of the trouble tickets. The only sticky bit is getting a clue to the user to create a sane .htaccess and php.ini in their public_html directory.
This solves so much work on the server side it’s not worth not doing.
how to use Debian’s package manager apt on an rpm-based system because it takes care of package dependencies automagically which can save a lot of trouble
There’s no need to use apt on Suse, and I think in general it’s not a good idea, as APT was not designed for Suse and it has YaST. It can handle repositories, resolve dependencies, find packages and so on, with a very well-made graphical interface. In fact, Suse is specially designed around YaST. And for those who love the command line there’s “y2pmsh”, a CLI frontend. There are plenty of YaST repositories, like the ones by Packman and GBV (Guillermo Ballester Valor). Even the official packages (and a lot more) are available in a repository made by Suse in their ftp and mirrors. So there’s no need for APT on Suse. YaST works out-of-the-box and if you use Suse you’ll be sure you have it, while APT needs to be installed manually and doesn’t have a front-end as good as YaST. Also, YaST can handle delta rpm packages, that allow you to update your system without needing to download the whole packages but just the differences with the ones you have installed. As far as I know, APT can’t do this. Talking about the updates, YaST not only can manage rpm packages but also shell-scripts like the ones used to download and install the Nvidia driver or MsTTFcorefonts too. And if someone still have reservations around YaST, read the file /usr/share/doc/packages/yast2/COPYING and you’ll see it contains the text of the GPL license.
Don’t misunderstand me. APT is a good tool and works very well in Debian, but I think it’s not for Suse.
An ISP with no RADIUS server. Seems like someone never worked for an ISP. Title is a bit misleading.
apt-rpm:
https://moin.conectiva.com.br/AptRpm
works wonderfully with Suse. At my place of employment we use it to distribute updates to Suse, Fedora, and RedHat… among those it works the best with Suse (Fedora and RedHat tend to create dependency problems with their updates).
It beats me why after so many years of good work from the APT for SUSE developers (Richard Bos et all), there are still people against it.
1)The repositories you mention were originally created for Apt:
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/9.2-i386/
And as everybody can see they are in the primary SUSE mirror (obviously they wouldn’t if SUSE/Novell didn’t accept them)
2)APT is a lot easier to set up. Once installed you just have to add *one word* for each extra component you want, not a whole URL, something that some novices find rather hard to understand. As to the actual install of APT, it couldn’t be easier: just two rpms: apt-libs and apt.
3)APT has a very nice and intuitive GUI as well: synaptic.
4)While YaST is of course a very good tool, the software managing part of it is not that good at handling dependencies: I have been left quite a few times with a broken system which only an “apt-get -f install” could solve. I know that this happens to others quite on a regular basis.
5)APT does have its delta rpm repositories:
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/9.2-i386/RPMS.update-drp…
From the article:
For my purposes I decide to use one big /-partition and a swap partition.
Bad idea for a server system, especially a web server. You should have a separate /boot partition for security, as well as a separate partition just for web user accounts. It’s also a good idea to put /var in it’s own partition, and purely for performance reasons you should have the swap on a separate physical drive. If you are running a combination web/email server, you should ideally have another partition just for email user accounts. This is not just for security purposes either; having a separate partition for each service provided makes management much easier.
This is a very poor article. If I managed an ISP and saw someone doing manual installs of Suse boxes rather than using AutoYast2 I’d fire their asses. Has the author actually ever worked in the real world?
Belive it or not people who actually work for a living don’t go around doing manual installs, and don’t care if an installer is pretty or not, despite what the vast majority of articles on osnews and the like seem to show. All of the configuration steps would be scripted.
Check out Jumpstart for Solaris, AutoYast2 for Suse and Kickstart for Red Hat, and write an article using those. Not this kind of crap.
erm… I don’t know if you’ve used autoyast before… but you have to manually load the modules for your hardware in the autoyast script. Its awesome when you’re rolling out a bunch of identical machines…. but its hardly true that you would never do a manual install in the real world.