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I've used SME Server successfully in the past. http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page

SME Server (formerly e-smith) can be found at http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Download It has everything - web hosting, email, antivirus, anti-SPAM, FTP, etc. Sets up in 10 minutes on almost any old PC you have lying around. You will want a static ip address from your isp.

Sorry that I'm posting AC, but I've modded on a good discussion.

There are other alternatives than configuring your own: Clear, formerly ClarkConnect; SME Server; and Zentyal to name a few.

I mixed up my own for a while, then switched to SME because my kids were growing up and seemed to want Winders on their computers. (My wife, also, and I didn't favor trying configure Samba.) I was looking for a couple of specific features that looked like they would never appear in SME, so I stayed up most of one night and migrated to E-box (now Zentyal). I've been specific about using only maildir and lots of backups, so migration wasn't an issue.

Best parts? I don't have to think about my ISP and e-mail storage, and many of the nitty-gritty configuration issues are cared for by people more knowledgeable than I. I don't think about spam: It's taken care of. My MTA is the same as is used in the stable release of Ubuntu, so I presume that it's taken care of. (There's also some IDS or another that sent me an e-mail that I fretted over, only to conclude that my server was fine.) My domain was blacklisted just once, while I was configuring things myself. There's a fourth problem that you imply: I let my ISP handle outgoing e-mails. The big sites don't like *dsl* that they get in the reverse lookup that they seem to do automatically. (I only ever had trouble with UCLA.)

The only thing that I don't like is that I've had to put a lot of trust in those who are configuring the distros that I've used. Seems to me that they're doing a better job than I do. Even when I switched from e-smith, it was only through a desire for addition features; otherwise, I was quite happy.

Consider ClearOS too. Both SME and ClearOS received top marks in the recent review by theregister.co.uk. It is not surprising, they share the same stable code heritage and with the release of Redhat 6 we can expect more goodies to trickle down. They also have a fairly good relationship together and share knowledge. For instance, the Windows 7 compatibility in SME 8 comes from contributions from developers on the ClearOS project. The new installer on ClearOS 6 (not yet in beta) comes from developers on the SME project.

I've used SME Server with FreePBX in similar roles.

It's as close to appliance-level simplicity as you're likely to get.

If you want inspiration about automated configuration management done right, take a look at SME Server. It's got a template-based, event-driven configuration management system with a mature, well-documented API that could easily be appropriated for in-house use.

The SME Server distro itself is a general-purpose small office server, so it's likely not appropriate for your shop, but their approach to configuration management is simple, well-designed and extremely well-implemented.

Full disclosure: I worked for the company that developed SME Server for a couple of years, and I continue to deploy and support it widely.

If you want inspiration about automated configuration management done right, take a look at SME Server. It's got a template-based, event-driven configuration management system with a mature, well-documented API that could easily be appropriated for in-house use.

The SME Server distro itself is a general-purpose small office server, so it's likely not appropriate for your shop, but their approach to configuration management is simple, well-designed and extremely well-implemented.

Full disclosure: I worked for the company that developed SME Server for a couple of years, and I continue to deploy and support it widely.

I've been keeping up with this thread and sme server ( http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page ) has been touted as an alternative. Not LDAP but looks like it will work well as a PDC. I'm going to try it out next week. :)

"Exceptionally reliable and easy to use, SME Server can be installed and configured in less than 15 minutes - yet it's powered by a secure and open Linux platform that's fully upgradeable and customizable. Simply install it on any standard PC and in minutes you'll have a robust Linux-based server capable of fully replacing those expensive Windows server licenses and providing a full range of services - including e-mail, firewall, file and print-sharing, web hosting, remote access and more. "

Source: http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:About

Try http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page - DNS queries for smeserver.org fail...

I used SpamAssassin/procmail/IMAP on an e-smith/SME Server running on an old P200 machine in a company of about 20 people from 2000-2003. Procmail passed a copy of the message to SA. Depending on SA's verdict, the email either went into the Inbox or a Spam subfolder. I also setup learning subfolders and used a cron job to pass those emails to sa-learn.

No messages got altered (procmail passed a copy of the message, not the actual message) and all were just a click away, so false positives were a very minor issue. sa-learn did a good job of getting messages scored correctly. Using SA's RBL tests allows you to get the benefits of marking spam from known sources without flat-out rejecting those messages (which does cancel out the benefit of an RBL completely blocking spam traffic).

The biggest issue I've heard of with SpamAssassin is the processing power it requires. spamd/spamc helps that (compared to running the full spamassassin for each message) and even allows you to have multiple client machines connecting to one SA server. We didn't get nearly as much email as you do, but we never had any issues with that old PC we used, so I would think you'd be fine with any modern server running it.

I can strongly recommend using SME Server from http://www.contribs.org/ - It is fast, stable & secure and works well with almost any hardware, especially older machines. I have been using it in its various incantations for about 7 years and it is really great. It is a snap to set up and has full RAID support, automatically setting up various RAID configurations, depending on how many disks you install. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed. It will also double as a web and email server and has great community support. Best of all - its totally free - currently based on CentOs

I used to use gentoo for everything; it's sweet inasmuch as you can do anything with the time. The problem with Gentoo is that it has a HUGE up-front time investment to learn. I'm too old and have too many kids now to keep making that investment. There are good alternatives here and here if you want something easier to use with good management tools. If you want a little bit more, look at smeserver. I seem to recall that there are one or two more like smeserver, but I'm too lazy to look.

Good luck.

http://www.smeserver.org/ - based on Centos4, provides email, file sharing, web serving, firewall out of the box and with about a 15 minute setup. Easy config, and can run for years with no attention (literally). Simple webbased admin and configuration.

There is also a committed base of users who extend the base functionality with additional contribs http://www.contribs.org/ to give extra features. It's easy and cool and it works like a charm.

Try it.

Simon

"Automate as in a shell script? Try creating a batch file... Although I must admit that Microsoft goofed when they ditched some of the more useful batch commands, like choice.com - they're still available on the web, but not included in the default install anymore... as for the lack of a decent copy command, try typing "xcopy /?" at the command prompt - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the number of options available. I know, I know, i'm tooting M$'s horn, but I have found that any OS is only as good as the effort you put into learning how to use it."

Sorry, maybe I should have made it clear that I worked professionally with MS products from about DOS 6 until Windows 2000, when I finally switched entirely to FOSS. I've written a number of batch files - and you're right about some of the assumptions they made once DOS bagen to fade. I've also used ActiveState Perl, Cygwin and a number of other really wonderful utilities. I didn't mean to create the impression that this kind of thing is impossible on Windows. It's just that it's hard to get at by default.

Entirely the opposite is true in the Unix/Linux world. No matter what GUI I find myself staring at, I'm pretty much assured that - with a nominal amount of variation - I will find more or less the same toolset at hand, and files in more or less the same place.

Using Windows as a development or sysadmin workstation is not a big deal, because within a day or two you can get things tweaked just the way you like them, and all your favourite tools installed. Unfortunately, that kind of thing isn't very portable. Working on client computers was the situation that set my teeth a-grinding, as I mentioned in the GP.

"On a side note, show me *any* major software company that will offer *FREE* linux support to a user *WITHOUT CHECKING A WARRANTY*."

Heh, the staff who develop the contribs.org SME Server do that, and have done since we were first hired by e-smith, inc. back in the dotcom boom. Of course they do it on a best-effort, spare-time basis, but they do provide a lot of support.

"For that matter, show me *any* ISP that will help you configure your *nix box to use pppoe or slip to attach to their network..."

You picked the wrong person to ask. I've been working with the national telecom in the country where I live, helping them test exactly this kind of scenario. They gave me three free months Internet, fixed IPs to run servers from, and have consulted me on all their relevant documentation.

Times, they are a-changin', my friend. 8^)

Try SME Server from http://contribs.org/

SME Server features include:

        * Sharing of a single Internet connection between multiple computers
        * A network firewall to protect against Internet intruders
        * A robust email server, which includes virus and spam filtering and webmail
        * File and print sharing
        * Web application server, including support for MySQL, Perl and PHP
        * Secure remote access
        * Supported languages: Deutsch, English, Español, Français and Italiano, with more on the way
        * Complete binary compatibility with the leading Linux server distribution
        * and much more

all managed through an intuitive web interface

I doubt it - there are plenty of us who enjoy the "set and forget" aspect of Linux servers. I've been using SME (used to be E-Smith) server Contribs for the past five years.

That's probably the only objection I'd have to FreeNAS - it doesn't do as many nice things as SME, which also sets up some fairly handy services like "iBays", which are web/intranet pages made simple. Worth looking at if you want more than just fileserving but still want to keep it simple.

SME 7.0 is based on CentOS 4 and is a fairly turn-key installation and it has all these features already built in and it has a web based configuration interface. (http://www.contribs.org)

It's also a common practice to use a delayed SMTP response to thwart spammers. Maybe this person's ping script doesn't account for any delay and thus returns an error.

We were doing this for the SME Server (http://www.contribs.org/) back in 2000, when it was still owned by e-smith, inc. We shipped one CD free of charge to anyone who filled out a request form on our site.

The effect was quite positive. It helped to build awareness of the software at a critical point in its life, and we went from a few hundred servers installed in the wild to a few thousand. Not huge, but still enough to build a really dynamic community. The server's onto version 7 now, and the community is stronger than ever.

I think the biggest reason why Ubuntu ships their software anywhere for free is that most people who live in the developing world (including me) simply couldn't get it otherwise. It's very smart, but more importantly it shows that Ubuntu is willing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to creating an operating system 'for everyone else.'

"AFAIK, KDE and GNOME has both easy ways to create shares for now, but there is no way to configure SAMBA for just several default scenarios which could be - anonymous read-only, anonymous read-write, user-based read-only, user-based read-write, custom. Default could be user-based read-only."

SME Server does exactly that, through a very simple web interface. If you need corporate support, Mitel Networks provides a hardware/software package that's easily deployed into IT-less situations, like franchise offices or into teleworker setups.

Full disclosure: I worked on this software for a number of years, but in fairness, I like it enough that I continue to deploy it in places where people need robust but simple small network servers.

1. Many solutions did not support and RAID 2. Closed-source meant no ability to hack/upgrade hardware 3. In some cases, inablility to upgrade disk size.

My solution was to build a PC with 2 SATA disks and install SME http://contribs.org/. I wanted the additional benefits of a NT domain controller with roaming profiles and a VPN endpoint, but these were just added benefits to the file service. Under the hood, its just a suite a packages sitting on CentOS. The 2 drives are mirrored using LVM (which was sufficient for my needs). You still retain 'root' access to the host but can manage most tasks from a webpage. I find it to be a near-zero maintance appliance after the fairly quick & painless install.

Another solution that I look at was OpenFiler http://www.openfiler.com/ which also appeared to have good file service (including snapshot capabilities). I decided on SME purely because of the 'extras'.

"When taking into consideration TCO for the company just big enough to want to do their server stuffs in-house, but not big enough to hire a full fledged IT department ... Microsoft wins. Hands down it wins."

Bullshit.

Just because you only know one way of integrating IT into small and medium sized businesses doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.

I worked for three years with Mitel, and have about 7 and a half years' experience with Windows systems small, medium and large business. The server software Mitel sells can be safely administered remotely for everything except hardware failure. And when I say everything, I mean everything.

We worked with one company that had sold its services into automotive dealerships nationwide. They administered hundreds of these servers with full-time staff of three, and about a dozen hardware monkeys to swap drives etc.

And yes, there's a Free version, too. I'm currently using it to support servers on islands stretched across a thousand miles of ocean. 8^)

I would suggest checking out the "SME Server" distribution available at http://www.contribs.org/ as it is the new and improved version of what was formerly known as the "e-smith server and gateway". A couple of years after Mitel acquired e-smith, they helped transition support for their "developer release" over to the developer community centered around that web site. That group has had some ups and downs, but seems to now be doing some good stuff and on a solid track. It's well worth a look. I use it at home for my small business and it's rock solid.

I can't recommend any books, but I've been using the SMEServer Linux distro for a couple of small businesses I'm involved with. Works right 'out of the box' as a SAMBA file server, gateway & firewall, user/account manager, POP3 server, FTP server, and backup/archiver with a nifty web interface. Nice and simple, and all that our businesses need.

It's a RedHat-based distro, so you might need a good book for that. Install Subversion and you've got a great little repository and revision control system too.

If I was stating from scratch I go wireless. No or very few calbe to take care of and it should be fast enough.

Also I'd recommend getting a preconfigured server.
If you want Linux then there is
*SME - http://contribs.org/
*ClarkConnect - http://www.clarkconnect.com/

Both have a free version. Basically they wrap everything to together with a web interface. Things are bolted on as plugins.

Or if you want to go the Microsoft way there is
*SBS - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/def ault.mspx

Anyway those are my recommendations.

"...wouldn't it make sense to ask the potential customers first?"

Son, with an attitude like that, you'll never get far in development. 8^)

I've been working in IT for about a year and a half now in a country designated by the UN as an LDC (Least Developed Country). A lot of people have challenged my assertion that the communications infrastructure is critical to development, pointing to the 34% literacy rate in this country, the abysmal state of health care and various other items as higher priorities.

But when I ask the locals what they think is more important, they always end up talking about communication. How hard it is to contact a doctor, how hard it is to find books to read, how hard it is to take their corrupt leaders to task.

This country has some of the highest telephone and Internet rates in the world. The staff of the NGO I work with share a single modem line (using the SME Server for dial-on-demand and proxying services). The cost for unlimited dial-up in the capital? USD 200 per month. This is higher than the monthly minimum wage. And most people don't earn as much as that.

Would cheaper, more efficient communications help make health care, education, business etc. better here? Ask a local and they'll give you a gentle you-must-be-new-here look and in the politest tones explain say, effectively, 'Damn straight! Without affordable communications, we can't do anything!'

So, on behalf of the people I work with: Thank you ever so much for showing a tad of common sense. It's so rare in the developing world that donors actually listen.

Certainly ... 1. RHEL like OS is being deployed and tested for free ... on much more equipment than it would otherwise be. This leads to more potential RHEL customers. We also supply bug reports to the RHEL bugzilla so they see and can fix many more problems.

2. There are 4 or 5 open source projects that are based on a CentOS base:

http://contribs.org/modules/phpwiki/index.php/Upco ming%20Releases%20page

http://www.openfiler.org/sponsors/

http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/

http://www.rocksclusters.org/Rocks/

http://www.visualmediatech.com/

3. There are many customers who want an Enterprise Linux that they don;t have to pay for ... we are providing them a service.

4. That is how the GPL works :)

Here's an example of TCO ownership I'd like you to reply to:

I own a small bussiness and Id like to have a ftp site/SMB fileserver. I have an old desktop box in the corner that Id like to use that has fairly standard hardware. Ive decided to put a big fat IDE hard drive to store files on, and everything else is sufficient.

It has winows 98 on it, so It would need to be either upgraded to Windows 2003 Server edition or install a linux distribution on it. Would you actually say that Windows Server has a cheaper TCO than let's say SME?

Does Microsoft actually claim that for a case such as this there is actually a cost benifit for a very small bussiness to use Windows over Linux, In none perfect-for-microsoft situations?

If you have a good, reliable broadband connection from an ISP like Speakeasy, then you can probably set up a small server and handle your own e-mail and hosting. So long as you don't need rocket science, you'll get really good results. You just need to have an ISP that gives you a static IP (ideally) and has an AUP that allows you to run servers.

If you do that, then good options for the hosting OS itself would be either the SME Server (from http://www.contribs.org/), or the new version of Clark Connect that just came out this week (http://www.clarkconnect.com/ - I use the commercial version for my home server). If you're not serving up tons of dynamic content a fairly small PC and relatively low-bandwidth DSL line will give you really good results. I also use ZoneEdit for my DNS and backup MX service - that way with backup MX even if I'm down for a while I won't miss any mail and I'll just get it despooled when I come back up.

Another option potentially would be to use a Mac Mini with the 10-user version of MacOS X Server - that'd give you a nice turnkey server for about $1k. But it won't give you spam controls, which both the Linux distros I mentioned above will do. And day-to-day admin of both SME and ClarkConnect are real easy - in fact, ClarkConnect will take care of automatically providing all your updates when you buy the commercial (and cheap) version. They'll also do e-mail antivirus and give you what ZoneEdit offers as an ASP service - though it's not cheap.

As of late September, Lycoris announced that it would handle the development and support of SME server. This is a customised RedHat Linux mail-server/gateway package that appears to have a substantial install base in K-12 school districts, as well as in my company. Additionally, they just migrated contribs.org, SMEs primary developer and support forums, over to their datacenter. Personally, I've found the site to be an invaluable resource for supporting this platform.

As of late September, Lycoris announced that it would handle the development and support of SME server. This is a customised RedHat Linux mail-server/gateway package that appears to have a substantial install base in K-12 school districts, as well as in my company. Additionally, they just migrated contribs.org, SMEs primary developer and support forums, over to their datacenter. Personally, I've found the site to be an invaluable resource for supporting this platform.

I've been using SME first as a Firewall / Web / File / Mail / FTP Server, then later on a DMZ behind a dedicated Firewall (Astaro), as I wasn't comfortable runing my servers in direct contact with the net (LDAP, for instance, has nothing to do on a front-line firewall...)

the SME server is basically a Red-hat 7.2 with a very simple Web_Interface...

My system has been running fine for the last 3+ years.
They recently added an auto-update feature (yum) as well as some nice scripts to auto-install a full Linux virus checker (bitdefender and AVG I think) for the mail/file server+SpamAssasin...

If no script, you usually find a very proper how-to where all you really have to know is how to copy and paste to the console... CMS, LDAP, Customer Web_site delegated management, Ecommerce, network jukebox have been adapted to SME.

It being based on red-hat also allow you to install anything Linux that has ever been compiled for rh7.2, and you can install gcc and all necessary packages to compile as you wish...only you won't have web controls, except if you write the interface into the RPM specifically for SME...

So it's a perfect server for anyone with a shallow knowledge of Linux configuration or the wish to implement a complete server within one hour...
You can do most of the configuration with the web interface and it's all really trivial and fast when you already have some networking knowledge.

Right now I'm hosting a French Rock group fan page (not so big, maybe 100 000 hits a month), along with a starting genealogy site - gift to my father, have to keep him occupied 8) - and a webmail system that also is my pop/smtp server...

runs on PII450 + 320 Mo Ram and a 10 Gig hdd, average CPU usage is 4% and I have never had a single problem with it...

The only reproach I had was that it can barely be seen as a bleeding edge (kernel 2.2, etc), but then it just works...

Recently there has been a project going on porting SME to Centos (RH Enterprise full GPL edition)
you can find the details here.

SME had a specific web Interface system, and the red hat RPMs where modified to add web-interface and specifics...
Maybe Lycoris can work out some adaptation to the Webmin portofolio and add/modify to everything that already exists there, facilitating roll-over (for example SME samba configuration is much simpler that Webmin's) in a pure web-controlled Debian distro...

If Lycoris keeps the broad simplicity concept and integrates it with their debian update/install system, you have the perfect all in one linux server with recent Apache/PHP/ Whatever you need, you maybe have what we all need, a simple, user friendly andf possibly ultra-powerfull all purpose "Linux Server for The Masses"(TM)

SME is the distribution that made me start Linux as I was looking for a dead cheap firewall and decided to use that old P200 I had in a closet...
I used SCO and Smoothwall before using SME for the added web/mail/ftp server possibilities.

This server software is the coolest thing I've ever seen. All configured via web browser, does mail, ftp, webserver.. acts as a router and windows domain controller. Awesome product. Worked right out of the box (burnt cd), configured my dsl first shot, and samba works without tinkering. I think you can get it :here

Love the Mini ITX - ixnay on the CF hard drive. I'd say go with a 2.5" laptop drive, they're cheap, and many Mini-ITX cases have the brackets to take them already. If not, it's easy to adapt it in. Lower power draw than the standard 3.5" drive, and it's not a major performance hit. You'll wear out a CF drive as a server with any kind of real activity.

Or just use a laptop in the first place. Any old midrange Pentium will do (use one with a real mobile processor, though - not one with a desktop chip). Or an old PowerBook G4 would be real slick, either running Linux or MacOS X Server.

My own home box is a Mini-ITX running E-Smith. It's based on an older RedHat version, with nice wizards and web-based management.

"(note to distributors: PLEASE start designing for a versioned /etc .)."

Done.

See, this is why I love Free Software.

I would suggest checking out SME Server. Although it a complete OS rather than a config tool, it has a really simple web interface that can be used to administer the most common tasks of the server. Almost any non-linux user can have a stable web/intranet/mail/ftp server in a fraction of the time and there is almost no learning required :)

I stuck with Redhat 9 for all my servers for now.

At home I use Gentoo and E-smith SME server .

I tried FC1 for a while and I find it very buggy. For the very first time, I didn't trust it enough to put it in production! It is basically the old redhat but they don't test it as much.

I prefer to have a distro that works instead of always trying to find runarounds due to bugs.

I nolonger need tools to edit config files. I just need stable packages, updates and security patches that works.

Before I give up, I'm going to give Fedora Core 2 another look. Debian is looking might good to me right now.

Sorry, forgot to include the links to e-smith:

e-smith.org The original Mitel developer site, which is moving to: contribs.org the community development site, and a repository for extensions and modifications for the server, as well as docs, howtos, and the new home for the user discussion forums.

Things are a bit rough at contribs.org right now, but they only found out Mitel was looking to hand the distro over a few weeks ago, so things are still (messily) in transition. It should be getting much smoother over the next few weeks...

1. E-smith (formerly owned by Mitel, and still the basis of their commercial products for both general and telecom servers) is currently in transition to full ownership by the developer community, so there are two sites: e-smith.org and contribs.org, it's new home.
2. Clarkconnect - not nearly as comprehensive as e-smith, but good for the basics: clarkconnect.com

You should also bookmark contribs.org if you want to do anything with E-smith. It's the community support site. It started rather recently so it's a bit sparce now, but I'm sure it will pick up as people join.