Topic: Is e-smith SME 5.5 the product for me?

[Wayne Morgan]

Hi to all,

I'm looking for a system to do the following:

Provide internet access via K56 dial-up to 5 computers on our lan
Provide firewall for security
Provide fileserver services for our Win98/ME/2000Pro/XP Home systems running TCP/IP - about 1Gb of files.
No website / ftp hosting required, no external/RAS/VPN required
We don't have a domain name or static IP address (will this be a problem?)

Is e-smith SME 5.5 for us?

TIA

Wayne

[rob]

Dial up modem will need to be a serial external type

Consider 5.1.2 - a look at http://www.e-smith.org/bugs.php3 will show you the no. of bugs already in a very new release.

5.1.2 is stable as.

[Monkey]

>We don't have a domain name or static IP address (will this be a problem?)

No

[Michael Smith]

E-Smith/SME works GREAT for exactly what you're describing, and it's dead easy to set up.

Actually the dialup modem doesn't HAVE to be external ... it just works a LOT easier if you use a controller-based modem, whether internal or external.  56K internal controller-based modems are getting rather scarce.

To get proper file sharing to your XP and 2000 boxes, don't forget to update Samba to the latest e-smith RPM ... I think it's 2.2.3a.  Hmmmmmm, Darrell May's howto seems to've gone missing!  I did it, it worked, here's a link to the Google cache:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5Mbn6pc2Q4cC:myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/contrib/samba-2.2.3-a/samba-howto.html+e-smith+samba+2.2.3a&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

You can also get an excellent Dialup control panel for your Service Manager:

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/e-smith/contrib/KamiSvetli/RPMS/noarch/

I also followed Mr. May's HDPARM howto with good results for ME ... don't do this on your box once it's in production!!!

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/hdparm-howto.html

There are lots of nifty add-ons for groupware, etc. but basically it works beautifully, right out of the box.  Let us know how it goes for you.

[rob]

Michael Smith wrote:
> To get proper file sharing to your XP and 2000 boxes, don't
> forget to update Samba to the latest e-smith RPM ...

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/contrib/samba-2.2.5-4/

> You can also get an excellent Dialup control panel for your
> Service Manager:
>
> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/e-smith/contrib/KamiSvetli/RPMS/noarch/

Thanks Michael ! !

>
> I also followed Mr. May's HDPARM howto with good results for
> ME ... don't do this on your box once it's in production!!!
>
> http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/hdparm-howto.html

Unless you have a real dog of a server definitely enable the hdparm setting. We enable it in every server we build

hdparm -Tt /dev/hda will give you a data transfer figure for your hard-drive. Typically with hdparm disabled you get around 2 to 3 mbps, with hdparm enabled you get around 20mbps. Any i686 intel computer will be fine with hdparm enabled in our experience.

Even so - run the server hard afterward - to be sure. THEN put into production

Rob

[Wayne Morgan]

Michael,

My main concerns are these:

do we have to use the email server built in or can we just use our ISP POP3 /SMTP servers from each Windows computer via the server / gateway?

as we have a workgroup, not a domain, are there any special setup requirements?

Thanks

Wayne

[Michael Smith]

You don't have to use the SME's email server if you don't wish to.  As to domain/workgroup, that's easily settable on the SME box and you can make it a domain controller or not, just as you like.  SME boxes are very well-behaved in a Windows network.