Re: Need Help: Linux, SugarCRM, ASTERIX, RSync ...

Guy Bonneau wrote:
: I was told this was a good place to meet the local linux community and get
: connected with some help.

You're definitely in the right place.  Welcome!

: 1. What is a good linux system or does it matter? I was thinking AMD64, I
: have used some HP AMD 64s with no problems. I was told Debian is a good
: stable production Linux. Comments.

Most people these days seem to go Ubuntu: it's easy to install, it Just
Works^TM, and it's based on Debian.  In all honesty, so long as you pick a
distribution that's appropriate for your knowledge level, it doesn't really
matter.

A few of the most popular are:

Ubuntu - Never used it myself, but everyone I know who uses it loves it.
	Easy to install, easy to configure, easy to maintain, and is backed
	by a company that seems to have its heart and soul in OSS.  Based on
	Debian, which has been around for as long as I can remember.

Gentoo - My personal preferred distro, it's a complete DIY system.  Only
	worth looking at if you're already fairly knowledgable, or are
	willing to spend the time to figure out how it all works.  It's a
	more modern distro, having cropped up about five years ago (or so?).

Fedora - Kinda, sorta the testbed for RedHat's Linux, this one's been
	around, in one form or another, for a number of years.  Very mature,
	very stable, and is based on the RPM package format.  You'll also
	find that if you need to install software from a company (think
	Oracle), they'll likely distribute it in RPM format.

OpenSUSE - Novell's kinda-sorta testbed for their own Linux distro.  Based on
	RPM, it's got the backing of a large company that appears to have
	'seen the light' (so to speak) a few years back, dropped their DOS
	efforts, and moved to Linux.  I've used it fairly extensively; it's
	a decent distro.

(As Fedora and OpenSUSE are pseudo-testbeds for Corporate products, they
tend to be fairly well organized, and suitable for someone new to Linux.)

(Honourable Mentions: Yellowdog, if you're on PPC, Mandriva, and the
venerable Slackware.)

The bigger question is platform.  Two years ago, I would have said to stay
away from AMD64, and stick with i386.  You'll find a great number of things
don't work right on amd64 -- namely Flash -- and that things tend to run
more slowly on amd64 than i386.  The only real, tangible benefit provided by
amd64 is that it can properly address >4GB of RAM.  (That, and if you're
crunching numbers on large data sets, amd64 can be optimized to be faster.)


There's a famous quote that paraphrased comes out like: the last of the
previous generation is always better than the first of the current.  We're
still pretty new into 64-bit territory, so it's not terribly common to find
64-bit optimized cases.  That being said, we're much, much further along now
than two years ago, and I've got a 64-bit OS on my laptop right now.  TBH,
I'm actually curious to see what the list has to say about x86 vs. x64.

One of the bigger questions you'll need to ask yourself is: are you going
hardcore OSS, or are you okay with some proprietary bits in your system?

: 2. Local Linux Server ( maybe 2 mirrored )  mirrored with setup on Hosted
: Server ( BlueHost currently )  Joomla Website ( NOW ), SugarCRM Community (
: NOW ), Asterix , and RSYNC

Erm...  I don't really understand the question?

Instead of having two duplicated servers, I'd suggest regular backups.  It'll
wind up being cheaper and much easier in the long run.  Sure, downtime might
be longer when you crash -- everything eventually crashes -- but not having
to worry about synchronization, patches, etc. is a Good Thing.

: 4. Website: A form on the Joomla site, send data to SugarCRM Leads Table.
: 5. Synchronizing Google Calendar with SugarCRM.

For any SugarCRM modifications, I'd suggest looking at their website for
things like mailing lists, forums, wikis, etc.

Actually, I just did a search for "sugarcrm google calendar", and the second
hit looks promising.  That, and they seem to have a site called "SugarForge"
set up, which, given the name, makes me think it's a repository for
extensions, plugins, hacks, scripts, and the like to modify and extend
SugarCRM's capabilities and behaviours.

: There are other things I would like to do ( email server, email scripting &
: filtering etc ... ), but these are the first priority.

If I can make a suggestion...

If you're going to be setting this up for a small office, seriously consider
putting out a monitoring system.  It doesn't need to be fancy, but if you
take the time to properly deploy, say, Nagios, you'll wind up thanking
yourself some day.

(The single smartest thing I've ever done with my home setup was to enable
the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring daemon, so I know when drives in my disk array are
going bad.)
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