RE: Clean install (Long)

["Mugleston, Brad" <brad mugleston gwl com>]

Newby to Newby let me try.

I just did the same basic thing but only Win95 and RH7.1.  Please see below
for my experiences.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Al Gelders [SMTP:agelders lightspeed net]
> Sent:	Monday, May 06, 2002 1:27 PM
> To:	redhat-install-list redhat com
> Subject:	Clean install (Long)
> 
> 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. [Mugleston, Brad]   Do you mean GIG drives?  I
> hope so. 
> 	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:
[Mugleston, Brad]  First back of the machine any and all possible files you
may have that you may want to at least look at later (i.e. anything you have
modified or written)

> 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.) [Mugleston, Brad]  Should 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? [Mugleston, Brad]  Sendmail for 7.2 seems a little
> more stable or the setup is better - I couldn't get it to work under 7.1
> but it works out of the box in 7.2. 
> 
> 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. [Mugleston, Brad]  I had this problem and I'm trying to think
> about what I did to fix it.  I think all I really needed to do was make
> sure my host files were set up correctly and didn't need a DNS on my
> machine pre-cable. 
> 
> 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.
[Mugleston, Brad]  I don't think any work that well - for some reason they
all want to write their own file so you can't change from one to another.
IT would be nice if there was ONE firewall file and a bunch of config
programs.  I downloaded FIRESTARTER and it at least knows how it is
currently set up so you don't start from scratch each time.

> 5.  My understanding of the server option in install is that it
> reformats ALL drives on the system. Is that correct? [Mugleston, Brad]
> Yep, 100% gone, nothing left over, nada, zip.  Been there done that. 
> 
> 6.  Will I still be able to mount and access my second drive which
> contains all user home directories?  [Mugleston, Brad]  No problem - will
> access the world  Will the gnome configurations still
> be ok or should I delete all of the gnome config files and start over?
> [Mugleston, Brad]  Should be OK but back them up first as you will
> probably be upgrading GNOME along the way too.
> 
One thing I ended up doing was blowing everything (just the Linux stuff)
away and starting from scratch.  There are a lot of changes in 7.2 and
unless you upgrade every program (and for many programs there isn't an
upgrade) you will have the same old software on your machine.  I had
problems with most of the new machine configuration tools (neat, swat,
hwbrowser) on upgrade but on a complete fresh install they work fine
business. IPTABLES is the new way to go but if you have IPCHAINS on your
machine it will use those.  I got very confused so I only installed IPTABLES
and the firewall works great.  

[Mugleston, Brad]  
FYI my home system is ONE RH7.2 connected to my cable modem via ETH1 and my
hub connected to ETH0.  Hanging on the hub are  3+ Windows 95 PC's that all
have internet access and we share drives and printers (SAMBA) - the setup
almost did it all itself.

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