From: Bill Farrell <billfarr ages com>
Reply-To: redhat-install-list redhat com
To: "'redhat-install-list redhat com'" <redhat-install-list redhat com>
Subject: RE: Red Hat 7.1 For Public Email/DNS Server?
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 14:36:33 -0400
Personal opinion? I've been running a web hosting business on RH for two
years now and am absolutely tickled with the stability and the support.
Just can't beat 'em.
I've tried other flavours of Linux and to be quite frank for a
balls-to-the-wall, tuned-to-serve shop nothing comes close for ease of
configuration and maintenance. I just put up RH 7.1 yesterday and the
other
folks on this list had it absolutely right... it ROCKS.
RH seemed to have gotten the weirdnesses out of xinetd which prevented me
from putting 7.x into production before. I've even treated myself to a
desktop this go round. Look
To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I started out a few years
back
with a couple of NT servers and a few hot ideas. Until RH Linux came along
my business suffered because instead of adding new features, I was
constantly babying servers, rebooting, guessing why things fell over, etc
etc ad nauseam. We've all been through that one. My solution was to toss
M$ out on their collective backsides and put a platform in place that
actually *worked* in the REAL world. Oddly enough, my daily administration
burden went from 8ish hours a day to recently about an hour or so.
It's nice when one can get the server farm constituents to take care of and
watch over one another...
This week I'm adding my 24th through 32nd server, all going to be RH Linux,
just like their "elders". Our current operation (which started in my
Florida room) now spans 3 states and two continents. And still growing!
See
what happens with the right platform?
In answer to your questions:
Do yourself a favour: avoid sendmail unless you are the sort of masochist
who enjoys spending long nights and all weekend debugging multi-domain
bird's-nest configurations. Been there, done that, burnt the T-shirt!
That's the only *nix-based software that ever (almost) managed to whup my
butt. I hear really, really nice things about qmail, though, and there are
a lot of folks on this list who are readily familiar with it. I took the
chicken's way out and kept one Comquack Pentium 75 for running NT so I can
use Deerfield's MDaemon. If you're planning on being an ISP and hosting
multiple email domains, I *strongly* urge you to check it out
(http://mdaemon.deerfield.com/features/index.cfm?loc=2). That's the ONLY
NT-based app tolerated in our shop :-)
I'm now running 4 DNS servers (physical, that is, as there are aliases),
all
on BIND. The latest-greatest BIND, and nothing a minute older would be my
pick. BIND is a piece of cake to configure if you toss the manual first.
If you decide to go the BIND route, drop me an email directly and I've got
a
cookbook, get-you-going-fast example. WITH explanations.
If you've ever dealt with *nix before, you'll find Linux amazingly
comfortable. No matter WHOSE Linux you wind up picking, they all have
their
own little ways of doing things. These are the vagaries one expects when
dealing with *nix in any case. I was really suprised to find that Linux
did
everything that "real" *nix did, plus a whole lot more. And it's at least
equally stable to any other *nix that I deal with on a daily basis, like
HP/UX (HP/UX rel 10 is SWEET!!! but Linux does everything THAT does and
more, so that gives you an idea of how feature-packed Linux is).
I'd strongly suggest that you do a good bit of reading through the Apache
web site before plopping databases (or ANYTHING executable) right out on to
the web. We've done a lot of interesting and tricky things with Apache and
are sold on it. Need I say that it beats the pants off of IIS for
robustness and security?
But ya gotta turn the security ON. Be careful about allowing folks to
execute queries or anything else just straightaway. There are tons of
stuff
both on the RH site and http://www.apache.org. If you're betting your
business on web hosting, learn Apache front-to-back even if you never are
*completely* comfortable with *nix.
Best of luck with your new venture! It's a tough market out there, but
there's plenty to go for. You sound like you've thought it out and are
re'd't'go. You're in good company on this list.
Regards,
Bill
-----Original Message-----
From: James Q. Stansfield [mailto:jstansfield trader ca]
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 12:20 PM
To: Redhat-Install-List
Subject: OTP: Red Hat 7.1 For Public Email/DNS Server?
I'm putting two servers online within the next month to support a
fledgling
Web Hosting business and am looking to have one server for Web/SQL Hosting
and a separate server for the Email and DNS needs of the business.
I've already decided on the basics, such as : it will be a linux
box; it
will be RedHat (what I'm most familiar with); SSH will be used for secure
loginse etc...
My question(s):
-Should I go with RH7.1 for the Email & DNS server?
-If so what are my better choices for the services running?
-BIND or what alternative for DNS?
-Sendmail or qmail?
I'm new to these aspects of Linux but am familiar with Linux on the
whole
and am not afraid of a little hard work/reading...
Much thanks in advance to all who reply.
James Q. Stansfield
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