Re: qmail publicfile : need advice

First, i would say that regarding the hardware, a P3 would perform better, because of the bigger cache. IDE disks should be cheaper, but the RAID offers you the same protection and you'll be able to buy bigger hard disks. Use the linux distribution that you are most used with. You can do whatever you want which each distribution (if you know unix and linux well enough, the small differences between vendors should not be a problem to you), but it's easier to work with the one that you had time to study from head to tail and you have a good idea about each script and the place of each configuration file.
Publicfile will not be a real replacement for apache, because it servers only static content, but considering the environment (students want everytime to hack the server, and if they can use dynamic pages, your work will be harder just to check what are they doing) it is the best option.
You should also consider vsftpd for ftp upload - i think it is the only free secure ftp server (yet).
One more advantage for this setup (djbdns and publicfile) would be that you will be able to map *.your.domain to an IP address, then any query like something.your.domain will be solved to that IP. As you know, publicfile servers the page for http://something.your.domain from /public/file/something.your.domain/, so if you just make a user with the home directory /public/file/something.your.domain, it is done. No need to restart web server, no need to restart the dns service - you might even automate this with a mail form that is send to a specific mailbox, where a script gets it (with | script in .qmail) and performs those this step (useradd -m)
This will look better than www.your.domain/~something.
Don't allow telnet/ssh sessions to the machine from students. A machine is really secure only when you have no kind of shell access on it. If you have, it is just a matter of time.
You might also consider to put near an old machine (like a 100 Mhz pentium, 200Mhz i guess it will be too much) to set on it a minimally configured apache server (not the default install from most distributions i mean) with some webmail interface that accesses the accounts via pop3 and does not store informations locally. (you can find some on freshmeat). This way, you will offer web access to reading e-mail, without a real care about security - they find a way to hack it, just reinstall and patch - no threat to the real server.

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 12:26:06 +0530
PayalR <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 	I have been asked by a high school to setup a mail and webserver for the 
> school. Under this, I will have to provide 5Mb webspace and additional 5 Mb 
> for emails for each of 3000 students. This work is totally a non-profit work 
> and I also have to suggest the hardware. 
> Since the budget is as always a major bottleneck I plan to use assembled PC 
> intel  P-4, 512 Mb RAM, 2x20Gb SCSI hardrives and the works. I plan to use 
> Mandrake/Red Hat Linux with kernel 2.4.x. 
> 	Also, since I guess these might be limiting factors, I won't push Apache 
> c'os of some security issues. Instead I would prefer publicfile with qmail 
> and djbdns. Though 3000 users are there, I guess 40-50% of them will make 
> their webpages and only 10% of them will have hits. As regards email,  I 
> guess all of them use it and say I will get outgoing SMTP traffic of around 
> 12,000 daily (average). 
> 	Do you guys recommend this setup. Am I right in not using apache? ( to be 
> frank I want to use public files cos' I love Dan's softwares :) ) Also, this 
> is a one time setup and the location is far off from my home, in a different 
> state. I want the server to be up and trouble-free as long as possible.
> 	Do you suggest any changes in this? Is hardware and softwares OK?
> Thanks a lot in advance and bye.
> With regards.
> -Payal
> 
> 


-- 
Victor STANESCU - network manager
LOGIC Telecom, Bucharest, ROMANIA