[CLUE-Talk] [Fwd: The Challenge...]

[Lynn Danielson]

Kevin Cullis wrote:
> 
> > My plan is to set up the server. Establish an intranet and a separate,
> > secure place to share files, plus I want to set up print services and
> > e-mail processing.

Presumably offering email, file and print services to Windows boxes, yes?
Since he wants security, is he planning for a separate connection to the
internet with a firewall.

Samba should be able to handle the file and print sharing.  Is the printer
going to be directly attached to the Linux box or a separate network printer?

An intranet implies a web server.  So, apache would have to be configured.
Depending on what he wants to do with it, this could get involved.

Sendmail or Qmail could probably handle the email.  What email client is he
intending to use?  Someone on this list posted recently posted something 
about and Outlook extension for Sendmail.

> > This is to be a model for a future office with only about 10 employees and
> > needs to have the capacity to handle about 150,000 emails annually as well

That's an average of over 400 emails/day.  I'm not sure what a good average
size/file might be for be, but disk space could become an issue, here.  Most
of my emails are approx. 3KB, but then there's the occasional 500KB or 5MB
file.  I'd be interested in knowing what other people think would be a good 
size allotment for mail queues and how they derive that.  As long as everyone
is using pop and downloading their mail off off the server daily, my best 
guess is that 500 MB of space would be sufficient for mail queues.

> > as well as storage of a 500,000 (about 1GB) entry table with ODBC access.
> > the data content must be automatically indexed and accessible by all
> > parties with access rights and backed up on a daily basis.

PostgreSQL or MySQL (w/ MyODBC) ought to suffice.  What is he planning to
use for a database client, MS Access?  If so, is he willing to consider 
something else?

> > How long should it take to set up?

Depends on who's doing it.  I'd expect it would take him at least a day or 
two to do it himself.  A paid professional who knows what they're doing 
might be able to set this up in a few hours as long as the expectations 
were clear from the start and the intranet requirements were basic.

> > What software solutions are available?
> > How much ongoing maintenance is going to be needed?

You might suggest he subscribe to KRUD for monthly updates.  Other than
that, he'll want to make sure his filesystems don't fill to capacity and
he might want to check his logs periodically.  Setting up something like
Big Brother might be sufficient for monitoring problems.  Maintenance 
should be minimal.

> > Can it be done with Linux 5.1 and nothing else?

While Red Hat 5.1 could work, why not try something more current, like 
7.1 or at least 6.2.  If he wants to stick with Red Hat, I'd suggest KRUD.
I think that all of this stuff comes with every version of Red Hat, I'm 
pretty sure it's available with KRUD (check the home page).  The pro 
version of SuSE comes with everything.  But if he's got a good internet
connection, it's all just a download away.

> > This is currently being done with our NT system in the office (except
> > the intranet part).

Really?  Nothing other than NT server out of the box?  I didn't realize NT
came with a free database.  

Lynn Danielson