Looking for advice on my company's linux server

djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
edited March 2010 in Science & Tech
Slicehost gives me the following choices of operating system images to use:

CentOS 5.4
Debian 5.0 (lenny)
Fedora 12 (constantine)
Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic)

Up until now I've been using Ubuntu Jaunty. I screwed it all up when I was trying to install the horde webmail system. I'm not opposed to sticking with Ubuntu. The reason I chose it was because I have the most experience with using Ubuntu Desktop. This time around I want to do things right and not have to start from scratch again for a long time. I'm using ispconfig 3 which is fairly rudimentary compared to Plesk and cPanel, but also free and sufficient enough to meet my needs. I know just enough about linux to be dangerous. Any advice would be great, thanks!

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited March 2010
    Ok so ummm what's your question? What kind of server are you trying to setup, what's your end goal in a perfect world?
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    This is a web and email server, I want it to be fast and secure. This is a shared virtual host running on a quad-core Intel machine and I have 512mb ram, 20gb storage and 300gb bandwidth. The main web site runs on the Joomla platform, SSL security is implemented, e-commerce is the main function. I don't mind the learning curve sometimes, but I'm still a novice with Linux.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I'm just wondering what distro would be the best to use. Should I stick with Ubuntu since I'm familiar with it, or would there be any advantages to switching to Fedora or CentOS, which I understand use the same binaries.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    If you're familiar with Ubuntu but also have a decent knowledge of Linux in general, I would recommend going with Debian. Ubuntu us a great desktop distribution, but when it comes to speed, security and reliability Debian is the way to go. Since Ubuntu is based off Debian many of the tools (specifically the apt system) and the configuration will still be familiar. Debian is also far more stable and less prone to radical changes than Ubuntu which makes it ideal for a server platform.

    If you really want to switch to an RPM distribution, I'd say definitely go with CentOS instead of Fedora. Once again, Fedora is a decent desktop distribution but Cent is more geared toward servers. Given your background with Ubuntu though I'd strongly recommend not going with either of these options unless you really want to learn the RPM system as well as the Red Hat way of doing things. The differences are subtle but will trip you up especially if you are not a Linux veteran.
  • miragemirage
    edited March 2010
    I only used RHEL with our servers. And it is rock solid. If you don't want to pay for it, I suggest CentOS which is based on RHEL.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited March 2010
    If you are comfortable with Ubuntu then I'd recomend setting it up with ubuntu server it's stable and fast. Debian is also a good option as familiarity in Ubuntu is very translatable into Debian. The key differences between the two are that Ubuntu tends to draw from more progressive packages where as Debian is slower to adopt packages into it's stable list. Also I find that for people new to linux Debian is a little harder to get things up and going with because the core installer doesn't bundle apps together into packages as nicely as the default Ubuntu server options.

    However if you really want to solid performance and stability RHEL wins. However migrating from the ease of apt-get to RPM can be a huge hurdle. Especially if you are responsible from building everything together from the ground up.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I think based on these recommendations, CentOS is the way to go. They want another $22/month for the RHEL license and that's about half of what I'm already paying for the service already. The good thing is that I have a tutorial I can run through for building ISPConfig setup on the CentOS platform, so I'll be able to see what the differences are right away and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up from there. Thanks for the help, this is exactly what I was looking for.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    With CentOS and RHEL, do you use SUDO like you would on Ubuntu, or something similar?
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    It's not configured by default like it is in Ubuntu, but it's pretty simple to configure.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Ack, I've already run into a small snag. I've setup an admin account with sudo privileges and an authentication key. Now I'm trying to setup my sshd_config file. I turned off root login, restricted user logins to my admin account, and everything I've done works ok. The only thing that doesn't work is when I try to set the port number to something other than 22 I can't connect. If I comment out the line with the Port setting, it defaults to 22 and I can login without a problem, but if I change it, I can't connect with the new port number. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I feel that once I have my SSH server secure I can pretty much tackle the rest of this no problem.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Check your iptables firewall settings
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Thanks, I had to turn the firewall off anyway. ISPConfig3 will install it's own.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Big ups to everyone for your help, I think I'm on the right path now.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I'm getting an error message when I try to build RPMs for courier-imap.
    sort: write failed: standard output: Broken pipe
sort: write error
make[2]: *** [check-am] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/compileuser/rpm/BUILD/courier-imap-4.6.0/imap'
make[1]: *** [check] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/compileuser/rpm/BUILD/courier-imap-4.6.0/imap'
make: *** [check-recursive] Error 1
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.52349 (%build)

    Just wondered if anyone else here has seen this before, or has successfully intalled courier-imap on CentOS.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I figured it out, but I don't know if I did it right. The problem occured when I was trying to use rpmbuild with the source code to make and install the rpm for courier-imap. I was able to compile from source by using different arguments after the ./configure command. Is there any way to apply those different arguments to rpmbuild?

    Example:

    ./configure --bindir=/usr/local/bin --mandir=/usr/local/man
    make
    make check
    sudo make install
    sudo make install-configure

    This worked, then I had to create the startup/shutdown script manually.
  • djmephdjmeph Detroit Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Alright, nevermind these last few posts. I've got it figured out. Thanks for all the help again.
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