fedora as a gateway / server

Mark Haney mhaney at ercbroadband.org
Tue May 29 22:13:38 UTC 2007


Michael.Coll-Barth at VerizonWireless.com wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I need a little guidance, not just a set of 'do this' instructions.
> Although, I won't toss those!  :)  
>
> I have built a small network at home for the family using five windows
> boxes and one Linux box.  Currently, everything plugs into a DSL Modem
> for Internet connectivity.  
>
> I would like to change this to have a Linux box ( Pentium II )
> residential serve as a gateway to provide firewall and proxy services.
> I suppose that it will also need to behave as a DHCP server?  Will it
> need a second NIC installed that will attach to a hub for the other
> boxes?  Is Fedora too big an OS for this?  Something smaller, Ubuntu?
>
> In addition, it would be nice to have another Linux box ( Pentium III )
> acting as a web/db/file server.  I plan to use Apache and Oracle for
> this.  Is Samba still what I should use to store Windows files?  Is
> there a mature IIS 6 'clone' or drop in replacement out there?  I
> haven't looked for this yet, so, don't yell.
>
> Any thoughts and/or suggestions before I go off to RTFM?  
>
> thanks,
> Michael
>
>   
My $0.02.  I have 13 boxes at home on my network.  All running Linux, 
but a couple dual boot to Windows for games,etc.  I have one linux box 
(FC6) as a squid proxy server that all the rest go through so I can 
limit and monitor my kids internet activity.  I have mine set as a DHCP 
server, but that isn't set in stone if you want to give static IPs to 
your clients.  Fedora is not too big an OS for this, but if you're 
running a PII you probably don't want a GUI running on it all the time.  
I don't think you will need a second NIC in the proxy server as I assume 
the DSL modem is probably a firewall as well ( I know mine is, so I can 
port forward anything I need from it to the gateway, however, a second 
one wouldn't hurt, it just might make admin a little more complex.

As for storing files, Apache is great for web services, and Samba is 
still 'de facto' in my opinion for letting windows boxes access the 
storage on that server.  I don't know about using Oracle as the db 
backend on the PIII box.  I'd almost use MySQL or something a little 
lighter to reduce resource usage on it.

Does this help?


-- 
Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator	
ERC Broadband





More information about the users mailing list