[luau] Best Linux Server?

[Eric Hattemer]

This post kind of got lost and neglected.  But in any case, I assume 
when you say raid-0 (striping), you really mean raid-1 (mirroring).  I 
don't know much about servers, but I figure redhat would be a good bet.  
I like Mandrake much better for desktops, but redhat is concentrated on 
their server markets.  Plus Warren is working on things for redhat right 
now that could make it a bunch better.  As far as raid cards go, a lot 
of people like the 3-ware cards.  I have no idea about their 
availability right now.  Otherwise 2 hard drive channels on the 
motherboard and linux kernel raid does just fine.  Make sure you set all 
the good parameters in /etc/sysconfig/harddisks, such as use DMA and 
maybe something like -X 68 (man hdparm).  And you'll get good 
performance and reliability.  But like has been said before, you won't 
get any protection from hacks or similar things, since raid backs up 
simultaneously, so you'll probably want something like a CD burner or if 
you want to go old-school, a tape drive. 

-Eric Hattemer
message untrimmed because it seems to have been ignored earlier:

Dustin Cross wrote:

>Aloha,
>
>What is the best distro choice for a simple web/webmail server.  My SuSE
>7.3 Sparc Ultra II server has been great for over two years, but I am
>starting to worry that I don't have any routine back-ups or disk
>mirroring.  If anything happened to this server Sandi would be very unhappy.
>
>I am thinking of building an inexpensive x86 with cheap IDE raid 0
>controller and two drives.  Is there a solid distro that is easy to keep up
>to date, (i.e. automated)?  I use SuSE's Online Update all the time now and
>it works okay.  Do any of the other distros have anything better?  What
>about Gentoo and its "emerge"?
>
>I don't have much time to spend keeping this system up-to-date and
>secure.Sadly my best security defense has been using sparc hardware, NO ONE
>writes exploits for Linux on Sparc hardware.  If I switch to an inexpensive
>x86 systems this won't be the case anymore.
>
>So what does everyone reccomend?
>
>
>My currect systems is:
>
>SuSE 7.3, Apache, Postfix, Imap, Squirrel Mail, PHPGroupware, Spam
>Assassin, and Procmail
>
>What I am looking for is reccomendation on distro (SuSE, Redhat, Mandrake,
>Gentoo, etc) and recomendation for inexpensive IDE Raid 0 card that works
>with linux.
>
>Or maybe I should just buy a second 36GB SCA SCSI drive, rebuild my Sparc
>and use software raid to mirror the drives.  What does everyone think about
>Gentoo for this?
>
>Is there any benefit to the inexpensive IDE raid cards over software raid?
>
>
>Mahalo,
>Dusty
>
>P.S. I would use my beloved OpenBSD for this but then I waste the second
>CPU in my Ultra II and I didn't see any inexpensive IDE raid cards
>supported under OpenBSD.
>
>
>
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