Topic: SME Server -Noob wnat's help with correct configuration

[mediaseller]

Hi.

Forgive me if I have posted in the wrong thread however I have been asked to provide a local charity with a server solution to replace the far too complicated MS SBS 20011.

The current set up is overkill for their needs of 8 users in total with 2 of them working from a remote location (satellite office). It comprises 2 extremely high spec computers one is the main file server with exchange server controlling the email. The second server is configured as a terminal server purely for the 2 remote workers to enter the local network and access email and the shared drive (where all the charities documents are kept).

I have started setting up SME server on the current Terminal server which I have de-commissioned and installed SME server V8 in server only mode and started to set up some users, i-bays etc,(for shared drive).

There is an ASDL modem/router on site which has the firewall disabled and it's not configured to be a DHCP server because the previous terminal server was handling all the security. I'm a bit reluctant to change this unless I have to.

My question is though because I'm setting this server up in my workshop away from site, if I want to add a network card and set it up in server/gateway mode can I do this remotely or do I have to be on site to do it?

Given that I have already gone some way to configuring users etc, can I just back up the settings and change the base config for server/gateway mode on site when I get there? Then restore the settings from the backup.

my plan is to take the new server to site over the weekend when no one is there so as to prevent disruption to the users workflow.

The customer has a website hosted elsewhere so I wondered if I could configure the web page feature for a local intranet or is it just a one page site for information uses only?

Your help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[mediaseller]

Anybody?

[stephdl]

You should read this, two times if needed, some of your questions are answered in our manual

http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation

My question is though because I'm setting this server up in my workshop away from site, if I want to add a network card and set it up in server/gateway mode can I do this remotely or do I have to be on site to do it?

If i remember well when you change the mode of your sme server (ie server-only to gateway) you reset the ssh access to no remote access, so you have to get a physical access to the server to set it again.

The customer has a website hosted elsewhere so I wondered if I could configure the web page feature for a local intranet or is it just a one page site for information uses only?

you have to use one ibay by website and set the domains panel of sme8 to point to the good ibay, moreover you have to set external dns if you want an access of users outside of your local network.

[mmccarn]

server-only vs server-gateway
Changing from server-only mode to server-gateway mode will have no effect on user settings. Using ssh/putty or the console, login as 'admin' using your root/admin password and change from 'server-only' to 'server-gateway'.  The system will reconfigure & reboot when you're done, and it's possible that the LAN interface will become the WAN interface after the reboot.

As stephdl mentions - once you install the SME server, be sure you can get into it remotely before you leave.  I use ssh to manage remote SME servers.  The preferred security model is to use public/private key authentication for your ssh connection as described here: http://wiki.contribs.org/SSH_Public-Private_Keys.

Website hosted elsewhere
If the website domain name is the same domain name used in the client's email addresses, you may need to create or edit a "hosts" entry for the website on the SME server (in the hosts section of server-manager) to return the Public IP of the web server.  By default, SME redirects all traffic for "mail.smedomain", "proxy.smedomain", "wpad.smedomain" and "www.smedomain" to the SME server itself for all domains configured in the domains section of server-manager.

If you're leaving DNS for LAN users on the Exchange server, this is probably not necessary.

Local websites
Your SME 8 server can host almost any LAMP webapp - owncloud, drupal, wordpress, mediawiki, dokuwiki - or any number of custom html/cgi websites. TomCat, Ruby, and Rails applications are a bit less "vanilla", but you'll still find instructions on the Wiki

In order to access the sme-hosted website from OUTSIDE your network, you'll need to configure DNS to get people there, or access it by the public IP address, or establish a VPN connection to the server and access it using the LAN IP.

You can install webapps into "ibays" - isolated information stores accessed at http://smedomain/<ibayname>.

You can re-direct a domain to an i-bay, so if you create the ibay "intranet", you can then create the domain "intranet.smedomain" and configure it to server the same content as "http://smedomain/<ibayname>"
By default a subfolder of each ibays is offered to local network users as a file share.

You can use SME Site Maker to install webapps into the "/opt" directory if you want to have a webapp that does not appear to users when they browse the local network.

You can install a webapp into  /home/e-smith/files/ibays/Primary/html and it will become the default website for your server (you may need to delete the pre-existing "index.html" from that folder).

You can install one or more webapps into sub-folders of the .../Primary/html folder, and get the same URL behavior you had with ibays (http://smedomain/<foldername>)

[mediaseller]

Thanks guys this is all very useful.

I just have to go to site this weekend and get slaving away. At least I have done a fair bit of the settings.

Thanks to stephdl and I appreciate the need to read the manual and if I had the time I would read it all the rest of today and through the night however I'm lumbered with doing this rapidly. I promise I'll read it from back to front when I'm done.

Very big thank you to mmcarn for the hand holding with well explained instructions.

I have only set up one server before about 10 years ago which was MS server 2000 and that was a nightmare but so much has changed since then.

My day job is fixing laptops and PCs and my knowledge of networking and servers is limited. I did though set up Nas4free in my workshop recently which works quite well.

I did try Zentyal for this job but again it's overkill for the customers needs and has a big learning curve for me given the time I've got. I like the relative simplicity of SME and the fact that the CentOS base is more secure than Ubuntu.

have a great weekend guys.