Knopppix actually?

[colin stewart]

Hi All,

I'm new to knoppix, and also to linux. I've been a computer user for a lot of years though, so I more or less know my way around a desk top, and am a bit rusty with command line stuff in general.

Anyways, I've been sampling a few linux distros, and so far knoppix has impressed me more than just about everything else I've tried.

The thing is, I'm after building a server and have just got in some hardware for it. I would have just fallen for the old M$ line again, but then I thought, hold on, why dont I see if linux can be an alternative.

So there's the main question, can linux, and particularlly knoppix offer me an alternative way to do this, and still have the same functionality.

I won't reel off an endless list of hardware and hopes (just yet) as I imagine you'd have a better idea of what you'd need to know. But in brief, it's an Epia with dual nics built in and has 512Mb ram and a 250Gb Western Digital drive.

As for what I want it to serve, well, I want to know how much it can do, but my likely needs are at least catch mail, serve a web page and maybe ftp to go with that. Also I want it to act as a news server for the rest of the house, since my ISP have a poor news server and the only way to get the best out of it is to check in every 15 minutes and grab the latest in the few groups I take on a regualr basis, that way when I come to read it, the delays in service don't drive me crazy. I may wat to do other stuff as an when I find out about it and it seems useful.

I've been doing all this with Win2000Pro and a handful of cheaper shareware proggies on an aging PIII 667 for a couple of years, but I am painfully aware the the old girl will need a rest soon, and this new one will best be built before than gets to be an issue.

I understand knoppix has debian underneath, and that's had good press with a lot of folks I've talked to. I've just found out that I'm not clever enough with any of this for Gentoo type linux, I nearly got BSD woody to install, no, actually I got it to install, but coulnd't get it configured fully, but that ended up the same use as not installed in my book! ;O)

I need something as simple to work with as windows, but I'm not sure I want it to be from M$ anymore.

Thing that's buggin me most is that there's not all that much you can get on one CD, and I'm concerned I may be asking a bit much of knoppix (yes I guess you could download and installl some extra stuff, but I'm concerned that'd start making it get too complex for me again)

Is this likely to work out OK? I don't mind putting in the hours but sometimes the hours and effort get wasted because you just end up left high and dry, or at least that's been my linux experience so far; I don't think I'm up for too much more of that sort of waste. I need this to work, should I just crawl back under the rock that is windows, or is there a real potential of the kind I'm looking for here?

[mcaycedo]

Humm, maybe Knoppix isn't the ideal tool for your needs. Knoppix is focused in Desktop tasks and demoing Linux to newbies.

You want to achieve some very simple server tasks and I think that your old machine will be more than enough for the job.

I don't have the expertise about get email and news reader and so on, but I have been tinkering a lot about hardware specifications and server issues. So, the first thing to have in mind when you assemble a server is tha you won't need GUI, only the server core. When I talk about GUI im refering to the window manager, the eye candy. If you configure your server well you won.t need to work on the machine itself at all, because it will be doing their jobs and nothing else. In windows it's imposible to separate the kernel from the GUI. In linux they are perfectly separated. If you launch Knoppix without GUI (in this case the windows manager it's called KDE) you only will need 32 mb in ram.

So, I think you should try another distribution, like Mandrake or fedora Core. And when installing, try to leave out the heavy GUI environment (like KDE and Gnome) and enable some tool desgigned to administrate the server via WEB pages like WEBMin. I installed one mandrake machine and installed WEBMin and the setup tasks where a breeze.

[OErjan]

eeeeh, i do not remember what comes with knoppix (have no acess to that just now)
but there are several mailservers that run on linux.
the venerable old sendmail is one, then you have apache for webhosting, you have mysql and so aswelll. ftp. hmmm, yes there are several there aswell. news, several there aswell.
go here and browse some for more http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html .
there are howtos galore on all these matters on http://tldp.org

if you want a "quick and dirty" ftp server, there is allways sshd that gives you sftp. it takes some 20seconds to get going (i have a script for it on this site, at http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9062&highlight= to be precise ). i do not know if windows will be able to access that without something like putty. it might work with ie, never tried.

these things are not easy to get going, but if you have some server experience the task should be in the realm of the possible.

[Mustang64]

If your looking for a firewall, look into SmoothWall

[colin stewart]

Humm, maybe Knoppix isn't the ideal tool for your needs. Knoppix is focused in Desktop tasks and demoing Linux to newbies.
Yeah, it's a shame though, as it does not suffer from the problem that all others I've tried suffer from; when I switch from one machine to another using the KVM the linux box will throw a complete hissy fit. The gui drives itself and opens all sorts of programs and menu items on it's own. Knoppix is the only one I've tried which is actually stable at that point. The only way I have found to get out of one of those is to reset, as keyboard and mouse are completely unusable at that stage. So Knoppix has earned my respect above all others for that alone!

Latest culprit to do it was Fedora this morning, after installing most of the 3 CDs! Given the question and answer session before that, we had maybe two and a half to three hours invested in it. It was all lost in minutes when the hissy fit struck! I have to say that Fedora looked so clean once it was up though - I'm very dissappointed that it blew it to be honest. Knoppix just does not do it! In fact knoppix does better than any version of windows does in this respect too. In windows, it might scroll a page or something or maybe even go back a page in the browser, but it leaves the rest still funtional, and does not do anything destructive in that way it does with just about all the other linux flavours I've tried. They include BSD (woody), Suse (two versions), Mandrake (three versions), Redhat (5.2), Gentoo (last weeks copy, that was was just not installable by yer average human though, and I am just average, at best).


You want to achieve some very simple server tasks and I think that your old machine will be more than enough for the job.

Well yes, and it has been about enough for the job, but the job is growing, and she's getting older. Being it's a server I needed to be thinking ahead, as it's getting more & more likely to breakdown - it's been on for a bit over two years solid now, having retired from a really rather busy life doing commercial grade 3d rendering before that! At present it hosts one domain, and my other domain is handled by another box, but later in the year I'd be wanting to see both on this new machine and quite possibly add an additional two or three domains (or more). The old one has had to be wangled to get by with one nic so far, the new kit I've now bought for this has two, so even at that level consolidating makes sense as it's going to fill the last two sockets on the hub here as it is.


I don't have the expertise about get email and news reader and so on, but I have been tinkering a lot about hardware specifications and server issues. So, the first thing to have in mind when you assemble a server is tha you won't need GUI, only the server core. When I talk about GUI im refering to the window manager, the eye candy.


That was my thought, but I don't mind it having one as well, and it should not really mess things up if I do. I've found odd times when it would have been very handy to have had the choice. That at the expense of a small amout of extra resources isn't too bad a deal given it won't get used most of the time anyway! I've been pleased with the results using Putty while I've been trialling the protoype for this project on a spare box.


If you configure your server well you won't need to work on the machine itself at all, because it will be doing their jobs and nothing else. In windows it's imposible to separate the kernel from the GUI. In linux they are perfectly separated. If you launch Knoppix without GUI (in this case the windows manager it's called KDE) you only will need 32 mb in ram. Well, I got a 512Mb stick yesterday, so that should hold it down for a while! ;O)


So, I think you should try another distribution, like Mandrake or fedora Core. And when installing, try to leave out the heavy GUI environment (like KDE and Gnome) and enable some tool desgigned to administrate the server via WEB pages like WEBMin. I installed one mandrake machine and installed WEBMin and the setup tasks where a breeze.

That ws the intial attraction to try Gentoo, since I know of another who uses it, and it's very easy to admin from anywhere in the world. Sadly I am not clever enough to make Gentoo work - it would not even rebooot! Actually, I should clarify that, I am talking about me not being able to make ot reboot sucessfully. However I also noted that the LiveCD can't reboot either. I guess that says something, but I'm not certain exactly what it says. Not very encouraging though, Knoppix of course works exactly fine with the same hardware! In fact I used an old knoppix CD (1.3?) to rescue Gentoo quite a few times! Clearly knoppix is deceptively robust.

It's looking like I am going to have to go with M$ then, since I've already tried the others and seen them fall prey to the fault involving the KVM. Windows and Knoppix are the only ones I know of that are not vulnerable to it, although Gentoo may have been ok, but we will never get to know about that one I guess!

After I posted this earlier, I tried Knoppix on another Epia here today and it's fine on that too - even KVM invulnerable; So given that news, I'm half tempted to look into Debian itself if knoppix is not a good choice, but that isn't going to be untill I've gotten over the Gentoo experience I don't think. For some reason I have yet to fully fathom, that one was a very bitter pill indeed. I'm starting to feel that I am asking harder pointier questions with all this and that a number of OSes will fold under this particualr issue, however if windows can cope, then I'm a bit surprised that so far only one Linux does given all the other things people tell you about it. I'm obviously loathe to walk away from knoppix given that's the only fully robust one I've found so far.

[colin stewart]

these things are not easy to get going, but if you have some server experience the task should be in the realm of the possible.

Adding what you say to that said by mcaycedo, then I suspect Debian could possibly end up the way to go, but I'm tempted to try and extend Knoppix as I am sure you'll undrstand if you read my reply to him.

I know this stuff isn't ofen easy, but you've adressed the "got to have" factor, and that's that it's in the realm of possible! ;O)

[colin stewart]

If your looking for a firewall, look into SmoothWall

That and IPCop are on my list!

[OErjan]

as knoppix is a tinkered Debian it is close. a Knoppix hddinstall and apt get should have you running in a very short time.
apt-get install webmin, apt-get install sendmail...
I usually do a bare minimal of Debian (just the first stage to make a bootable system) and use apt-get to install ssh, webmin... the less i have installed/running the less there is to mess upp(get hacked/go wrong.
with icewm it takes 3-400M of my hdd, rest is free for the good stuff.
you may go with knoppix and use apt-get install to get the extra things you need (perhaps remove a few?).

[c123]

Consider Webmin.

The idea is to administer evrything on your box from a web page. It's pretty admin oriented (so managing your servers etc), and I know there are lots of modules you can choose to install (or not depending on your needs).

One of the many advantages of Knoppix is that you can use knoppix-installer to install a fully-working (everything configured) Debian system in 30-60 minutes.

So one option to consider is using Knoppix to install Debian, then installing Webmin (I imagine available via the great 'apt-get install') to set up all the services you require.

Anyway, that's what I'd consider if I wanted a quick and easy solution :)