Daydream!
Purpose
The configuration itself is to be a everyday workstation, capable of multimedia, surfing the internet, office work, software development and whatever else I may come up with using the SuSE 8.1 distribution.
Hardware
- Name - Daydream
- Description - Typical workstation computer
- Model - None
- Hardware - Custom
| 333 Mhz Celeron | ||
| 768 mb Ram | ||
| Matrox 2.5 gb HDD | ||
| VisionTek GeForce2 video card w/32 mb | ||
| Intel(R) Pro/100 Fast Ethernet (82559 Fast Ethernet) | eth0 | |
| Sound Blaster Live |
Software
The following additional packages were installed for the configuration of this system, package names in italic were automatically chosen when another package was selected.
| network |
nfs/nis - autofs4, ypbind, yp-tools misc - xntp |
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| gui | kde3 - kdeaddons3-kate, kdeaddons3-kicker, kdeartwork3, kdeartwork3-audio, kdegraphics3, kdegraphics3-postscript, kdemultimedia3-sound, kdemultimedia3-video, kdepim3, kdepim3-organizer, kdetoys3, kdeutils3 | |
| development |
languages - binutils, gcc, gcc-g++ libraries - glib-devel, gtk-devel, glibc-devel, libstdc++-devel, xdevel sources - kernel-source tools - autoconf, automake, checkinstall, make |
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| printing | a2ps, bind9-utils, cups-client, yast2-printer, yast2-printerdb, ghostscript-x11, ghostscript-library, libgimpprint | |
| additional | moneydance | |
| removed | dhcpcd, ed, finger, lukemftp, providers, telnet |
Installation
For this system, the installation consisted of selecting the minimal install group. I manually selected/unselected additional packages that would be required to run X-windows with the KDE desktop. With the autocheck turned on, this is easily accomplished by clicking the following packages from the following subgroups:
- Graphical Base System
- sax2
- susewm
- yast2-control-center
- yast2-qt
- yast2-x11
- KDE Desktop Enviroment
- kdebase3-kdm
- kdebase3-SuSE
This has the benefit of automatically choosing additional packages that may be required due to dependencies. I then manually selected the additional packages needed to run the services and programs mentioned above. Once I had all the packages selected that I needed to install at this time, I could always come back later if I missed something, I clicked the 'Accept' button to begin the installation process and confirmed by clicking the 'Yes, Install' button.
During the install, I used YaST's hardware configuration to configure the network card and the video card. The network card was configured as 'eth0' for my internal network on a 'class c' network and the video card was configured at 1024x800 16bit, which was the maximum the video card would allow. Upon completion and bootup of the installation, I logged on as root and then installed the additional packages mentioned above which were not found on the SuSE CD collection.
Setup
Once the system finished installation and booted up, I then began the task of configuring for each of the purposes I mentioned above. The first thing I had to do though was add the users and groups that would be accessing the system from remote workstations. This is achieved rather easily with the YaST2 Control Center.
For postfix I began by using the Mail Transfer Agent module within the YaST2 control center. Configuring as a permanent connection, forwarding root's mail to a local user and routeing all email through my mail server (Wetdream). These changes are automatically added to the postfix configuration file and incorporated into the main.cf file that postfix uses.
For nfs/nis I simply needed to configure the NFS and NIS client packages to access my server (Wetdream). This was done using the NFS Client module and the NIS Client module within the YaST2 control center which will take care of modifying the fstab and yp.conf files. To allow the automatic mounting and unmounting of shares or filesystems, I turned on the automounter which takes care of mofidying the autofs file. Clicking the 'Next' button, I then entered the name of the NIS domain and since I had configured named on my network, I was able to actually put the name of the NIS server rather then just the IP address. Clicking the 'Finish' button makes the necessary changes and starts the required daemons.
For procmail I wanted some way to control the amount of spam mail that is received. I took a look at a program called TMDA which sounds exactly like what I'd like to do when it comes to filtering out spam but at this time doesn't work with the sendmail relay setup I use. What I finally came up with though was a set of procmail routines that do similar filtering to what TMDA does, but all with procmail routines. I'm actually rather happy with the results but like all programs it will always be a work in progress.
For xntp I began by modifying the ntp.conf file, adding my server as the only outside source server so that stratum 2 servers on the internet arn't receiving multiple requests from my LAN, all queries only go as far as my server. I left all the other settings alone.
For printing I used the Printer module within the YaST2 control center, under hardware. Because the only packages I installed consisted of the client portion of printing, the Printer module displays the client configuration upon launching. Since I configured my server to accept remote printing from the network, I simply entered the server name where the print server resides. You can also try and detect the print server by selecting the 'Lookup' button and selecting the 'IPP servers' option, which when found will enter the server name for you. Clicking the 'Test remotee IPP access' button verifies that you have access to print from this location. Clicking the 'Finish' button saves the settings, at which point you should beable to print to your network printer.
I finished up by making some minor modifications within the rc.config file so that some additional functions and packages would be properly activated at startup. After I was satisifed with the configuration of everything, I performed one final restart to verify that everything would be correctly started on bootup. I then configured root's mail so that all received mail would be forwarded to the mailbox of the account I use on the LAN, with the following command:
eg: echo local@address > .forward
and reprocessed root's mailbox to redeliver the mail currently residing with the following:
eg: cp /var/mail/root ~; cat /dev/null > /var/mail/root; formail -s procmail < ~/root
Files
The following will list each package as well as each file I needed to configure within them to get the server running as I intended. They are listed in alphabetical order not necessarily the order I configured them.
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Conclusion
After running the system for a few days to make sure everything was properly installed, configured and running correctly. I began installing development packages which would enable me to begincompiling and building new packages for the SuSE desktop system.