Help on chosing OS

[Chris Rodgers]

Either FreeBSD or Linux will do all this easily.

In FreeBSD, you'd need.

RELEASE 4.7 (download from www.freebsd.org or buy it on CDRom)

All the software below is part of the "ports collection" in /usr/ports (if
you choose to install it).

You just cd /usr/ports/net/apache (or whatever) and then "make && make
install". It will download and build everything. Alternatively, if you have
the other CDs in the FreeBSD set, you can use pkg_add to install binary
packages for these applications without having to wait for everything to
compile.

I recommend Courier-Imap from the ports collection for the e-mail users.
You may need to use fetchmail to get the e-mail from an ISP.
Sendmail is included as standard.

WEB proxy --> squid or mod_proxy with apache (see below).

Firewall --> IPFilter or IPFW (built into FreeBSD) (search google for
appropriate rules)

Hosting your site:

it's not really recommended under any OS to host your website off your proxy
/ firewall machine because of the risk of getting your private network
broken into if the web server is hacked. However, it is easy to do under
both freebsd and linux. Think Apache (and built in ftpd).

I hope that this helps. I'm sure that if you get stuck on individual parts
of this, people on the list will help out!

Chris Rodgers.


> Can the users please give me some honest advice.
>
> I don't know FreeBSD or Linux but would like to setup a computer to serve
> the following;
> * Email 5 users
> * WEB proxy but with a firewall to protect the Microsoft computers
> behind this machine
> * Host my site as well as allow FTP to certain files.
>
> Am I been too optimistic or can this be done?
>
> Is it possible for a novice to setup.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Roy
>
>