How to proceed depends on what you want the server to do for your company.
(A small quibble: your Linux host will be a server, not an intranet. It will
provide services to other hosts on your LAN. The composite -- server(s),
clients, and LAN -- is sometimes called an intranet, but not the server by
itself.)
You have a large number of choices, but the most likely ones for starters are:
1. e-mail -- to support e-mail just within your company, you'll need to set
up user accounts on the server, get sendmail (or other MTA) running, and
perhaps get POP3 running. The details depend on how the users will access
their own e-mail -- via telnet connections to the server or using an e-mail
client on their own hosts.
2. Web server -- to provide a Web server that is available only on your LAN,
you just need to get apache running, fairly easy to do for a isolated LAN.
The real work here is creating the site content.
3. File and print services. In an environment of Win9x or NT clients, this
means getting Samba configured and running. Start by reading the SMB HowTo.
4. To support connectivity (e-mail, Web server, Web browser, etc.) to and
from outside the LAN, you'll also need to get a ppp (or other protocol that
supports TCP/IP) connection running to an ISP, which *might* also involve
getting IP Masquerading running if you need to do Network Address
Translation (NAT). You'll want either a continuous connection to the ISP or
one that gets set up automatically on demand (diald is one app that handles
the second option). Start by reading the PPP HowTo, and maybe the IP Masq
and Firewall HowTos.
5. For most of these options, you'll also need a way for the other hosts to
know your server's hostname &/or IP address -- this means running DNS or
adding the hostname and address to /etc/hosts or the equivalent on
non-Linux/Unix hosts.
6. Running telnet and ftp are probably lower priorities, except that you'll
want to have telnet (or ssh, if security is a concern - this is really only
an issue if you have an Internet connection) running for system manager use.
This is easy to add -- if it's not already running, all you need to do (on
an isolated LAN) is uncomment the telnet line in /etc/inetd.conf, then
either restart or start inetd -- if you're on the Internet, you should also
look at "man 5 hosts_access" to see about restricting the ability to telnet
in from off-LAN hosts.
7. If there are a lot of client changes taking place on your LAN, you might
think about setting up a DHCP server, which would handle dynamic assignment
of IP addresses to clients.
8. If this server will hold important company information, it's never too
soon to begin thinking about (a) security and (b) backups.
So ... in sum, I'd suggest you consider what would make the biggest
(beneficial) impact at work and do that first.
At 08:56 PM 6/20/99 -0400, Chris Job wrote:
>I've loaded RedHat Linux 5.2 and Xwindows!!. I need some guidance on
>what to do next. My ultimate goal is the use this PC as an intranet for
>my company. So I at a lost as to where to go from here. By this I mean
>Should I configure email, ftp and telnet services before I configure the
>Apache server ? Or the other way around.
>
>Also, I plan to use a 56k modem (hopefully this is temp. until I show
>the powers that be the need for at least an ISDN connection). just to
>test things out and to show that it works. So my next question is how
>do I go about configuring everything so I can get it to work?
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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