[PLUG] My Linux switch success story

Russ Johnson russj at dimstar.net
Sat Nov 5 00:57:57 UTC 2005


Scott Van Hoosen wrote:

>When I mentioned installing Windows again on her second
>hard drive, she said to not bother, she never used it anyway.
>  
>
Oh, how I wish I could convert my SO. She's taking online classes from 
PCC. She's in the Administrative Assistant program. The instructors seem 
to feel that MS Office is the only thing out there. The typing classes 
use this Windows only program.

Hense, I am stuck supporting a Windows machine because someone outside 
my sphere of influence requires it.

>Recently I did some major changes at home, creating an NIS server which
>hosts all our /home folders, as well as a public folder, games folder,
>and applications folder. The kids like how they can hop on any
>computer, log in, and all their stuff is there: their files, music,
>game settings and controls, bookmarks, etc.
>
Another nice thing you'll like with this setup. If their computer dies, 
when you build them a new one, they log into their desktop and viola! 
all their stuff is still there. :)

>There is one drawback I've found with this setup: if the network goes
>down, everything goes down. I bought a cheap gigabit switch, which has
>crashed on me a couple times during multi-gig file transfers. But as
>long as the network is stable, things run really well.
>  
>
I bought one of the Dell 24 port switches for home. It was $69 shipped, 
mounts in my rack, and has near wirespeed throughput.


>Our firewall is Linux-based IPCop.
>  
>
I'm running Mandriva 2005LE for all my servers. I'll upgrade to 2006 
sometime soon. I also run IPCop for my firewall. I use the addon Block 
Out Traffic to limit the outbound traffic. I figure there are Windows 
machines on my network. If one of them gets infected with a virus and 
starts spewing mail across the net, I want to stop it.

After a little configuration to allow the apps I wanted, it seems to 
have worked really well.

Russ



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