Baslinux mailing list

["James Miller (office)" <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Matrix Mole wrote:
>
> I agree, it is a very challenging project. Basically what I'm going to do,
> is set BL up as a server machine and run it headless, most of my
> maintenance I'll be doing through telnet sessions. I guess fileserver is
> the wrong word to describe what I'm after. The linux box isn't going to
> simply be a fileserver. It's going to be the primary server in the home
> network. It will include print server, mail server, and other functions
> I'm sure that I can't think of right now. Essentially, it's just going to
> be a "toy" for me to play with. This helps answer a question that Robert
> brought up (why not use the Slackware install instead of BL). The machine
> I'm using as my Linux box is a Celeron300, with 64MB ram, and roughly
> 3.75GB of harddrive space spread over two seperate drives. I could just
> install the slackware7.1 package, but then I wouldn't know half of what
> all was on the system being used. With BL, I have a lot more control over
> what packages are installed and can actually learn what the packages do
> this way. Instead of having a bunch of packages I'll never know the
> existance of, or need installed. And of course, there's the desire to do
> this the hard way through a long line of installpkg uses. I'm an old
> school computer enthusiast. I like doing installs in such a way that I
> learn as well as have complete control. I've seen it described as a very
> masochist approach to computeing, but I find it enjoyable nonetheless.
> Anything that'll help me learn more :)
>
Ok. One final attempt to curb your masochistic tendencies.  Have you
looked into Freesco?  It might be a sort of happy medium.  It's tiny -
fits on a floppy disk - can be installed to HD as well, but compared to
other distros it's miniscule.  It's based on an old (but tried and
true) Linux kernel - 2.0.39.  And it's already all set up to do what you
want: it has a samba package, it can act as a print server, does telnet,
ssh, ftp.  It has diald for on-demand modem connections.#  It even comes
with a tiny http server (thttp).  But most importantly, it has a good and
reliable set of firewalling rules *already in place.*  This last thing is
going to be the trickiest - and riskiest - part of what you're doing to
figure out.  I have it as the router/gateway/local webserver on my small
home network and I'm pleased as punch.  It's stable, still actively
maintained.  Have a last look at this one before you jump full-throttle
into your do-it-yourself home networking project.  One possible downside:
it *requires* a DOS partition to load from if you install it to HD.  It
was written to run on UMSDOS.

Keep us posted, James

#  I used diald for a while on a newer computer and was very unhappy with
it.  It would disconnect from the 'net frequently with no apparent reason,
then I'd have to go through various gyrations to get it to connect again.
I had a fairly updated version, too.  Be prepared for such problems if
you'll have on-demand dialing (I think you really have to implement that
on your gateway machine to get a dialin connection to work for several
machines on a LAN).  Apparently, dial on-demand is a sufficiently complex
task that a program that does it really effectively is difficult to write.
Diald has certainly - at least from my experience with it - not succeeded
very well.