Linux Server Setup

[chakraps]

I've been using Linux Mint as a home desktop user for couple of years now. Very limited experience doing System Administration kinda things. I've volunteered to try set-up some of the following items for a friend. I intend doing it through a Linux server.

• Authentication service. Linux server should be able to authenticate a network of Windows machine users to login to their windows desktop. Each user will work on his/her own windows machine but just the login authentication is to be provided by a centralized Linux server. Ideally any user should be able to sit at any windows machine and be able to login and use the machine with their unique credentials.
• Centralized file/directory sharing service from the Linux server. Users logged in to the Windows machines must be able to access a shared area in the Linux server.
• The Linux server will also be used as an Application server. One of the requirements of the application is that it is supposed to work in a domain based network. The server should act as the head of the domain. For example, if the application searches our internal network for <ourcompanydomain.com> it should be lead to the Linux server.

I haven't done any of these things before. I thought these forums would be a good place to get some beginner advice to get me going in the right direction.


Thanks.

 

[Jodell88]

Samba should be able to do the last two. It may even be able to do the first.

 

[PreferLinux]

As far as I know Samba should be able to do the first one as well.

 

[chakraps]

I'm familiar with Mint. Its a desktop OS. Would that suffice or should I go with a server version like Ubuntu server. I thought I would start with something I know my way around and then dive into more advanced stuff.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm familiar with Mint. Its a desktop OS. Would that suffice or should I go with a server version like Ubuntu server. I thought I would start with something I know my way around and then dive into more advanced stuff.

The only real difference is the software installed by default and maybe the options used for the kernel, but that shouldn't really matter for home. Samba on Mint should be exactly the same as Samba on Ubuntu Server. The only major difference should be updates, Ubuntu Server packages should be more conservative with upgrades while Mint probably just uses whatever the latest is in Debian unstable or whatever tree Mint pulls from.

 

[chakraps]

The system has a single 360GB disk, 4GB RAM at the moment. Started reading about partition schemes. I made a basic layout. Yet to decide between LVM and regular partitions? Please share your thoughts on the scheme below and your advice on going with LVM (or not).

1. /boot - 100 MB (is it good to keep it outside LVM)
2. / - How much size allocation? (should this also be outside LVM)
3. /usr - size? (I guess from here on things go inside LVM)
4. /opt - size? (is separating it really useful or can it be merged with / )
5. /srv - size? (is separating it really useful or can it be merged with / )
6. /var - size?
7. /home - (as big as possible)
8. swap - (2xRAM size or less) Current available RAM = 4GB
9. Free space - Is it good to leave some free space for future re-allocation.

I'd very much appreciate your inputs.

 

[mv2devnull]

What I've used is like this:

1. /boot - 256 MB on /dev/sda1 (kernels are getting larger)
2. /dev/sda2 as swap. 4 GB might be enough -- if you swap that much, you do have an issue anyway
3. /dev/sda3 as LVM, 32Mb logical extent size
4. / - 10 GB on LVM, should cover installed packets and logs. Maybe 12 GB.
5. /local - on LVM. bind-mount /tmp and /home from its subfolders
6. Leave space for another /. You will upgrade some day.

 

[Jodell88]

Do NOT seperate \usr from \ because it can create problems that may or may not be visible.

 

[mv2devnull]

IME /usr is not so critical because initrd.img, /bin, and /sbin supposedly contain everything that is required to mount /usr on boot. /var is more critical, because services do store data there. However, /usr is rather static; just program packages and no data. Some distros might differ though.

/usr/local one might symlink or bind mount from another volume.

 

[Nothinman]

Do NOT seperate \usr from \ because it can create problems that may or may not be visible.

If it does your distro is severely broken because nothing out of the box should care that / and /usr are separate filesystems and, as mv2devnull says, everything you need to mount /usr should be in the initramfs image, /bin and /sbin. You would have to consider that when doing backups and such, but that's about it.

Ideally, you should be able to mount /usr read-only except for when you're doing updates but I doubt that is tested very much anymore.

I tend to only separate out filesystems where users will be writing data so /home and wherever you choose to put your shares (I personally dislike /srv, but it seems to be the default for a lot of packages now) because those are the ones most likely to fill up. If you think you'll have a lot of activity in /var because of large logs, MySQL db there, etc then that would be a good candidate as well. But I'm a big proponent of KISS which in this case means don't separate filesystems unless you have a need to do so.

 

[Jodell88]

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken

 

[Nothinman]

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken

Sounds awfully broken to me and could be fairly easily worked around with minimal effort by just having the initramfs mount /usr right after / but before starting udev and such. Debian still supports a separate /usr, I'm not sure about the level of breakage but I know that a lot of Debian developers and users still run with a separate /usr so it must still work pretty well.

 

[plastic desk]

I've never seen a distro that breaks with separate /usr. That's the whole point of it!

 

[Jodell88]

Sounds awfully broken to me and could be fairly easily worked around with minimal effort by just having the initramfs mount /usr right after / but before starting udev and such. Debian still supports a separate /usr, I'm not sure about the level of breakage but I know that a lot of Debian developers and users still run with a separate /usr so it must still work pretty well.

I've never seen a distro that breaks with separate /usr. That's the whole point of it!

No distro is really broken, just you may not get all the functionality that you'd expect from the software.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the extra hassle.

 

[Nothinman]

No distro is really broken, just you may not get all the functionality that you'd expect from the software.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the extra hassle.

In general I wouldn't either, but for a host that's going into a DMZ or something the added security of mounting /usr read-only can be worth it.