What a productive week I've had
Last Monday Karen returned to work after a six week holiday (and before you ask, she's a teacher, not a teenager). As part of her adjustment to the earlier mornings I agreed that I too would start getting out of bed at 7 AM. Looking back on the week gone by I'm glad I did. Do you ever have one of those really productive phases you seem to go through?
One of my major achievements this past few weeks has been the ridding of Windows from my, admittedly very small, home-office network. Where there once stood two Windows 2000 servers there now stands two Linux servers. You might have noticed I've been going on about it for a while now, starting a few weeks back when Erwin got me to download and install Red Hat 9. Well, since then I've been introduced to another flavour of Linux, called EnGarde Secure Linux from Guardian Digital. For this I have to thank Jim Gooch of Double 6, a Domino consulting company that specialises in Linux installs, who has been patient enough to guide me through getting my perfect environment up and running.
Whereas Red Hat 9 involves over a gigabyte of downloads and three install CDs, EnGarde is a mere 200MB. It's real bare-bones stuff. Not like Red Hat that insists on installing X windows and all the games even though you chose a server setup. It takes about 10 minutes to install EnGarde and you then have a real Linux server that is ultra secure. Boot in to the default "secure mode" and even root user is pretty much powerless to change anything. If you're interested, you can do as I did and download the free Community Edition, which contains everything you need for a basic server - database, Web, Mail, DNS etc. What it doesn't have however is file sharing. Something that was a must for me but was only available in the pay-for Professional version of EnGarde. Not to worry. Jim and his colleague Tony Byrne were good enough to get me comfortable with installing Samba on my own. No GUI. Just me and some RPM files and a crash-course with a text-editor called Vi or something.
So now I have a great setup. Two Linux servers - each serving its own purpose. An ultra secure EnGarde install for file-sharing, DNS and domain logins. Then, alongside it, a Red Hat 9 install for development purposes. Running Domino 6, Puakma, PHP, MySQL, FTP and Apache. To be honest I got a bit carried away with the "secure" server, disconnecting the CD-Rom and floppy, disabling boot-up from anything other than HD0, adding a BIOS password, locking the side-panel and creating a stupidly complex root password. A little fruitless when the main worry is getting broken in to and somebody simply walking off with it. Maybe I should move it to the airing-cupboard behind the hot water tank or something.
So, in short, this blog is a big, big thank you to the guys at Double 6 and to say that, if I can do it, so can any of you. If anybody else is thinking of doing anything similar, let me know and I'll pass on some of what I have learnt in the past few days. Starting to feel like a real Linux geek now ;o)
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Hey Jake, just a quick note to let ya know that I'm lovin the Linux talk on here! You have really got me inspired I can tell you - I've downloaded RH9, bought a couple of books and am playing around with it on a disused laptop I grabbed from work. The ultimate end game is to reload my existing windows box which serves up ND6 and File/Print at home and then perhaps even use it here at work for some little jobs I've got for it! Excellent stuff!
vi is one of those great quintessential UNIX programs, minimalistic and unbelievably quick and useful for program editing. The :%s/<old text>/<new text>/ replacement command is so very useful and speedy.
I had to come to grips with it on a Sun we had to manage. Since then, it is one of the first things I install on any Windows machine. There are good sites on it. The net gain in productivity makes it a program worth learning. I mainly use WinVi on Wintel.
Haven't heard someone talk about Vi for ages. We used it on a Sun machine too at college and most hated it. It really is brill though once you get the hang of it.
For the geeks there was no problem, but, I did feel for those who struggled with Unix *AND* had to cope with a strange editor!
Hello,
vi seems to be very powerfull but for me is too of an alien - you know what I mean? If you are used to Borland style you might find "joe" text editor quite useful. Do not know if it is part of EnGarde, though. Linux die-hards might not agree but for me joe is just perfect.
This is one of the most beatiful things about Linux - having so many choices....
Excellent job,I just want to move my Domino server to Linux,I think I will bother you sometimes.
Thanks for the kind comments Jake - we actually make a point of running Domino on Engarde wherever we can due to the minimal install requirements and high degree of security - for anyone wanting to load Domino onto Engarde there is a HowTo on our web site under Services, Domino for Linux, ND6 HowTo.
To Joe - no joe isn't installed in Engarde but there is no reason you couldn't install it if you wish - assuming you can find it on its own.
We've used some third party s/w created by Double 6 for a couple of years now and it's only just come to me that the company name (surely) comes from the fact that Double 6 is the highest DOMINO! Am I being a retard or did anyone else fail to spot this?
Correct - give that man a cigar !
Yes Linux is a great Domino server platform....Until you need to write an agent that creates Word documents or Excel spreadsheets from Domino data and discover that you need these office applications installed on your Domino server for the agents to run...its always something!
well this is going to get a bit off topic, but...
there's quite a bit you can do with web office components. or is it office web components?
anyway, if your users have office 2k installed (or higher, i believe) then the office web components are installed already on their machines. its not quite a full blown version, but it goes a long way, and it offloads a good deal of what you need to do to the client, all you have to do is provide the data.
there was an article in the view about it a while back. worth getting, i've done this now via ASP. the view article shows how to do it with domino. i don't know why you wouldn't be able to do it from any server, linux or whatever.
jonvon,
I stashed some info and links regarding (what I think) you are talking about here:
{Link}
If I am right in guessing at what you mean, you're talking about sending formatted HTML / XML with the appropriate content header.
I use the excel model frequently.
Good stuff!
Right now, what I need is a "Configuring Samba for Dummies" guide. I've got Domino installed on RH (just - the redbook was a great help) but I just now need to be able to access the Domino data directory from a Windows server (for BackupExec). Does anyone know of a good resource?
Hey, Jake/Community - how about someone setting up a Domino for Linux discussion board to help people like us?
Simon, check out {Link}
Dive in and take a look at /etc/samba/smb.conf (on RH), that with a read-up on 'smbadduser' to add smb users, and the 'chkconfig' and 'service' scripts to make sure smb is running as a service on your machine, should be enough to get you going.
Thanks Colin. That is the link that I was going to pass on and the one I've been using for the past few days.
Sharing files should be easy Simon. It's the Domain logins that are the real pain!
Thanks guys, very much appreciated.
I had managed to get Domino running on 7.2 (as it is the officially supported version) but I installed RH9 today and although I've not done the Domino install (I understand now how to set the LD_ASSUME.. bit in the bash file) I noticed that RH had a tool for configuring Samba and hey presto, it worked!... well, sort of... the domain logins seem to be the problem (now, where have I heard that before). Anyway, I'm sure that link will help me round it out. Thanks again.
For those interested our Domino/Linux startup script is being re-written for compatbility with RH9 and should be available on our web site in the next few days.