Clean install (Long)

["Al Gelders" <agelders lightspeed net>]

I'm getting ready to upgrade from RH7.1 installed a long time ago with
all kinds of <shall we say> junk littered about.  I'm want to do a clean
install so that I don't have to worry about any booby traps or other
things that may have been downloaded over the last 18 months.  Also,
when first installed, this was a standalone machine with only dialup
internet access and one disk drive dual booting to both Win98 and Linux.

 The current configuration is as follows:
	2 40 MB IDE drives.
	1 10 Mb NIC  (to be replaced with a 100MB NIC)
	1 56K Fax-modem.
	1 CDR IDE drive
	1 Zip drive
	512 MB RAM
	LAN on 192.168.1.* with 3-5 Windows systems configured as a
Workgroup. One of those will later be converted to Linux.
	UPS protected

Current network software:
	Squid
	perdition
	smtproxy
	Samba
	nntpcached
	pppd using demand dialing
	sshd
	No DNS server is installed.
	No NIS server installed.
	No sendmail running.
	No telnet or ftp servers.

Current misc. but touchy software
	Vmware (Runs other operating systems under Linux. I have 2.x
installed but also have a license for 3.x if needed.)
	cdrecord (Depends on SCSI emulation for the IDE CDR)
	
The system is to be used both as a firewall and occasionally as a work
station -- yes, I know these two uses are at odds.

Login is to be only local or over the LAN.  No remote access (via the
internet) will be allowed.

I want to support Internet connections via dialup ppp and include proxy
services for mail, browsing, news, and ftp access to the world. I plan
to change to DSL access after I'm convinced the system can't easily be
cracked.

I've now read over 1000 pages in multiple books trying to understand how
to go about it and have narrowed my initial questions to the following:

1. I have a now unused primary partition with Win98 that I want to
reclaim.  If I reformat it as ext3 but don't delete or combine any
partitions can I get away with renaming partitions only? I'd like to
install the root file system here.  (I'm trying to leave a way to
recover if the new install doesn't work.)

2.  Which proxy servers should I use?  I'm hoping I can keep squid,
nntpcache and samba since I'm starting to understand them a bit but my
mail proxy seems iffy to me.  I'm not sure how secure smtproxy and
perdition are. Should I just use sendmail?  Are there better choices for
smtp and pop3 proxy?

3.  I read somewhere that it's not a good idea to have a DNS server on a
firewall machine.  Is that true?  I know that some of my current
problems stem from not having DNS support when pppd isn't dialed in but
I don't want to set up an insecure connection since I will eventually
have DSL.

4.  What is the recommended firewall config program to use that won't
get me into trouble?  When first installing RH7.1 I kept losing all
internet access when I tried to use the included firewall configuration
wizard. I ended up doing several reinstalls before I learned to leave it
alone.

5.  My understanding of the server option in install is that it
reformats ALL drives on the system. Is that correct?

6.  Will I still be able to mount and access my second drive which
contains all user home directories?  Will the gnome configurations still
be ok or should I delete all of the gnome config files and start over?


Thanks for your help. Sorry for the long post.
Al Gelders
agelders lightspeed net