On Tuesday 27 November 2001 11:07 am, you wrote:
> I am going to be installing the latest Mandrake Linux package (8.1 I
> believe), We are going to be using it for a file storage server and are
> going to be using Samba to help communicate between this and our existing
> NT 4.0 network.  Are there any issues I should be on the look-out for? 
> Thanks.

Mandrake? On a server? 
*shudder*
Sorry, bad former job experience.

My concern is that Mandrake's primary focus isn't a server system. (Mandrake 
users care to comment?) They focus on ease of setup for a workstation. So 
when you install mandrake, you'll get lots of stuff running that just doesn't 
need to be running on a server. (Like, X.) I imagine you'll also get stuff 
that you don't need or want like apache, ftp, telnet, maybe a nameserver, I 
dunno. Depends on the defaults and how far you dig. 

Will this box be behind a firewall or will it be sitting out on the open, 
untamed internet? You'll definitly want to inform yourself about the defaults 
either way, but it should be blinking red if it's a public box. 

Well, all I can think of for now. Pretty much any version of samba will play 
nice with NT4. Do you have a plan for backing up stuff? In the simplist form, 
you should be able to point whatever you're using for NT backups at the samba 
shares and get the data. But you won't be able to get a proper backup of the 
Linux OS that way. But that probally isn't a big a deal as it is with NT. 
With Linux you can, in general, make a tar snapshot of /etc and be more or 
less OK to reinstall and then extract your configs.

-- 
Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://www.ringworld.org/~zibby 
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