Submitted by This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 10.2 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS), BIND DNS server, ProFTPd server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.).
replace it with any other distribution.
Score me for this, but this is my opinion after using 3 days with 10.2
After a release, any Suse consumer version does have more bugs then any other distribution. 3 – 5 months later, the version works better.
Try SLED10 if you want a stable Suse distribution.
It really depends on what you’re using on OpenSuse 10.2. It’s been very good for me so far, and way, way, way better than 10.1. I thought I wouldn’t come back after that.
What bugs are you encountering?
so far no answers. I have been using S10.2 on my playground (laptop) and didn’t find any issues so far that causes any show to stop. Maybe he still could give examples why it’s not working for him, else, we may start thinking it’s just a rant without reasonal backup ..
The article is about server customization, thus my questions will be a little bit off-topic.
I’d previously tried OpenSUSE on my desktop, but had to give up for two reasons:
* I could not find good 3rd party repositories (like rpmforge/livna or debian universe)
* I could not customize the desktop theme as I wanted (plain gnome clearlooks theme)
Does anyone know if those issues still remain.
“* I could not find good 3rd party repositories (like rpmforge/livna or debian universe)”
There’s a big list of 3rd party repositories available at the openSUSE.org wiki. For your convenience: http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories
The two primary ones you’d want are the Guru and Packman repository. Packman has a lot of stuff, including all the multimedia gear.
Guru: http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
Packman: http://packman.links2linux.org/
In addition there are also the openSUSE Build Service repositories, which you can find here: http://software.opensuse.org
“* I could not customize the desktop theme as I wanted (plain gnome clearlooks theme)”
I’m not a GNOME expert, since I primarily use KDE, but I’d assume the option for customizing the theme is under the control center, which you can get to from the new menu.
Edited 2006-12-17 19:49
Yes, of course GNOME has theme options in the control center.
However, SuSE tried to make its GNOME desktop look like the KDE one, they’ve changed some icons, fonts, and their default sizes. But I think they hardcoded those modifications which made Theme control panel useless.
I guess the situation is the opposite of Redhat here. Fedora is known to include “not so good” default modifications for KDE, and SuSE has similar approach on GNOME.
(Btw, the last version I tried was 10.0)
Edited 2006-12-17 21:10
Suse hasn’t harcoded any gnome settings. They offer exactly the same options as any distribution with gnome. It’s just the control panel that’s different.
I did not file a bug myself back then. However I could find two items related to my experience:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=168014
Here GNOME menu items are described to be too large. This was the same on my system, and the comments say it was an intentional SuSE patch.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=164680
This one tells that there are many KDE icons on a GNOME only install. Yes my icon theme was also KDE’ish and could not change it.
–
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=113700
This third one is not a bug, but explains things for me. It tells that GTK uses QT theme engine, which effectively makes it look like KDE.
Actually I’ve checked latest screenshots after these comments, and the GNOME desktop look a lot like a regular one now. I’ll give it another chance, but I guess I should stick with Fedora a little bit more if I need a GNOME based distribution.
Bug 1 and 2 are basically the same problem. People didn’t like the size and look of the previous default icons. I can agree with that, they aren’t very good looking. I don’t think it would be impossible to get rid of them though, either by selecting another default icon theme under themes > theme details or just uninstalling the RPM. But the point is that suse offers exactly the same options to customize the desktop as any other distribution with gnome. It’s just the defaults that are different. Besides neither of these bugs are relevant anymore since suse has a new gnome menu and a tango based icon theme now.
The other bug is about gtk-qt-engine, a GTK engine that uses the QT theme. It’s only used when running GTK applications under KDE so it’s not a problem for gnome users.
I think you should try 10.2. You wont be dissapointed, except for the broken package management perhaps.
as someone already stated there are hundreds of repositories…
I don’t use Gnome, but any issues customizing it would be Gnome issues not SuSE
What’s so particular about SUSE providing the “ultimate setup”? Linux is a modular OS and what is achieved here as the “ultimate” is really possible on any distribution (there may be very few where certain version issues are encountered?)
You may as well ask what’s so particular about reviewing each Linux distro. After all, they are modular, right?
“Linux” might be broadly considered modular, but each distro has it’s own quirks and oddities that make it unique, that’s why there are so many distros, each fits a certain niche.
There are also people who’ve never used SuSE’s tools before and need a bit of help, which, considering the state of most Linux software documentation, everyone could use a bit of extra help now and again.
which, considering the state of most Linux software documentation, everyone could use a bit of extra help now and again.
It’s interesting that people say that. I generally find that documentation on free software is better than commerical software that I’ve used. eg. Trying to find information about how things work and what can be configured in microsoft windows has been annoyingly difficult for me.
that is indeed true.
Ever seen the helpful errors, warnings etc that w2003 produces? And even then, half of the generated messages are produced by MS itself and the reference they give then reports that there is no information available. Talking about dcumentation.
Same holds for other errors.
Some docs are bad, true, but the general linux documentation is much better compared to many commercial pieces of software.
http://en.opensuse.org/YaST
Please list all individual GUI and CLI tools that cover each item in every section of YaST.
The inclusion of YaST is not, in my view, reason enough to say this makes SUSE the “ultimate”.
First of all, I believe the term was “perfect”, not “ultimate”. Secondly, if you go to howtoforge.com and search for “perfect”, you will see that the author has the same procedure for several distros, not just openSUSE.
I don’t believe that the term “perfect” was meant to say that openSUSE was perfect, only the way that the author configured it (same with the other distros).
So, if you like what he did, but not openSUSE, I encourage you to find the “perfect” setup for your distro of choice.
But Yast has one big advantage for those who are coming from Windows and are trying Linux for the first time: You are not left helpless after the installation when you want to do something that was so easy to do under Windows.
For example, think of formatting and partitioning a new harddisk. As a newbie you do not know what cfdisk or gnuparted is. But when you look into Yast you will find something called “Partitioner” that works for everyone. Something like this could be the Linux newbie’s first feeling of success.
This is not so bad, isn’t it?
True enough.
On the other hand, yast has a habit of getting in the way of doing manual system configuration. Not such a big deal for those who start with it, but it’s a pain in the ass for those of us who are used to a more traditional approach.
you can use yast _and_ manual config the stuff, it’s also an option.
Nothing, which is why The Perfect Setup is a series of articles which currently covers just about every major distro available – search for “the perfect setup” on their search page and you’ll find:
The Perfect Setup – Debian Sarge (3.1)
The Perfect Setup – Fedora Core 4
The Perfect Setup – Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server (Dapper Drake)
The Perfect Setup – SUSE 9.3
The Perfect Setup – Fedora Core 5 (64-bit)
The Perfect Setup – Mandrake/Mandriva 10.2
The Perfect Setup – SuSE 10.1 (32-bit)
The Perfect Setup – CentOS 4.3 (64-bit)
(I think there have been others too, but that should give you the picture).
http://en.opensuse.org/PegasosQuickStart102
I installed OpenSUSE 10.2 three days ago and I thought I’d try KDE for a change, as I haven’t used it on a day to day basis for about 3 or 4 years.
Installed OS10.2, added Guru and Packman repos, installed Beryl and configured it to work directly with my GF6100 rather than use XGL.
I have to say that I am very impressed with it so far. The only problems I had were getting Beryl to work properly (my fault), and adding mp3 support to Amarok (my fault again, was using wrong lib-xine).
I have no use for Kerry Beagle, so I removed it and all other related Beagle packages. This had the nice side effect of improving system responsiveness by a tremendously noticeable amount.
I changed the fonts to use Trebuche MS from my Win2K partition as the default ones are awful on the eye.
So far, so good. Yast is great, and my machine is both fast and stable.
I don’t think I will go back to GNOME again.
Edited 2006-12-18 00:50
In my opinion you don’t need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn’t working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only AppArmor was causing the problem).
Even if you regulary scan for changes?
Especially for a server that serves a lot off protocols AppArmor could present some badly needed protection.What i also miss is a virusscanner setup.Otherwise a good “The Perfect Setup”
Congratulations! Your post prompted me to register for an account so I could reply. [Except I can’t seem to get my reply to post as a reply to sukru…]
I’ve used SUSE on and off for only a couple of years, but I have looked at 10.2 (mostly the betas and RCs, but I seriously doubt that the final release changed anything with respect to customizations).
Regarding the font issue, I’ve noticed that SUSE will typically ask at first login, “what size is your display?” If you then configure a size, a setting is written to the xorg.conf file (size=<something>). After that, the fonts are larger by default (at least on my laptop 12.1 inch display) and it is difficult (or impossible) to configure. If you comment out that setting in your xorg.conf and restart X, the default font should be smaller and you can customize fonts again.
Now, I _know_ that you can customize the themes. Just go to the control panel under “themes” (strangely enough). The default is Gilouche, but you can choose from any number of installed ones, including Clearlooks. You can even customize the icons. The first thing I do to a SUSE install is transfer icons and themes from a Fedora box, so I know you can make it look almost exactly like a default Fedora desktop (I prefer the Fedora way to do things, but SUSE supports suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk better on my laptop). Themes/icons from /usr/share/icons and /usr/share/themes on the Fedora box can go into /opt/gnome/share/icons and /opt/gnome/share/themes on the SUSE box.
Finally, the GTK QT theme engine is only and issue if you run KDE! There, you can _optionally_ request that any GTK apps opened in KDE use the KDE theme. Thus, your Acrobat Reader, VMWare, etc, can use the KDE Plastik theme while in KDE. You can also enable this theme while in Gnome, but I’ve found it to be buggy. But it is definitely _not_ enabled by default.
HTH
> server that offers all services needed by ISPs and
> hosters (Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail
> server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS), BIND DNS server,
> ProFTPd server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota,
> Firewall, etc.).
Sorry, but to fufill these requirements I would have to go with FreeBSD; it’s certainly a better fit, and more geared towards this kind of function.
Don’t get me wrong, SUSE has it’s place (for now) alongside Ubuntu for best desktop (I still lean towards the faster moving Ubuntu) but as a server? Looking over the ‘HOWTO’ it walks you through a number of GUIs (graphical and text until about page 5) which a sys-admin shouldn’t need, but if they do, then they’re not ready to put a box on the internet. Before you add all of your PHP5 modules like this:
yast2 -i php5-bcmath php5-bz2 php5-calendar php5-ctype php5-curl php5-dbase php5-dom php5-ftp php5-gd php5-gettext php5-gmp php5-iconv php5-imap php5-ldap php5-mbstring php5-mcrypt php5-mhash php5-mysql php5-ncurses php5-odbc php5-openssl php5-pcntl php5-pgsql php5-posix php5-shmop php5-snmp php5-soap php5-sockets php5-sqlite php5-sysvsem php5-tokenizer php5-wddx php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-zlib php5-exif php5-fastcgi php5-pear php5-sysvmsg php5-sysvshm ImageMagick curl
Know what you’re doing, and why (and if) you need all of them for your implementation. Anything you don’t need shouldn’t be in there, it’s just more potential issues down the line. If you want to use Linux as a server, great, you can do it very well, but take it one step at a time, and use something more suited to the environment; I would look at either Debian or Slackware for stability and sanity in the Linux world. After a few years of that try out *BSD, you may like it.
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Sorry, but thats pure bullshit.
Ubuntu or FreeBSD don’t have anything like YaST, which contains tons of features for creating and configuring many different types of servers with point and click ease. Then there is ZENworks for managing large groups of client systems on your network.
That is why it sucks that Novell decided to join Microsoft and violate the GPLv3. I just hope that openSUSE survives or merges into another distro.
Otherwise, I’ll read the LFS book and make my own SUSE derivative.
> Sorry, but thats pure bullshit.
>
> Ubuntu or FreeBSD don’t have anything like YaST,
What’s bullshit? I never said Ubuntu or FreeBSD had anything like YaST — THAT WAS MY POINT! If you don’t know how to do these things it’s likely you don’t know why you’re doing these things so you’ll never be secure following some hand-holding GUI! Look, if you insist on something like this at least use Webadmin to have a least little more control and understanding, but again, utilizing the power of open source takes more than reading howtos, and I’d hardly consider a SUSE box setup by one as being the ‘ultimate’ setup.
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Okay, I have a question. Does anyone actually run one of these servers on their home network? If so, for what purpose? I can see where setting this up would be educational, but what real use does anyone get out of this? I’ve got several old PC’s sitting around my house, and been trying to figure out something worthwhile to do with them. I was thinking about setting one up as a server like this just to do it, but I’m really not sure what purpose it would serve, besides a file server. Can anyone share their experience with me on their uses of such a setup. Thanks.
Tim Holwerdi
Hi, My name is Tim Holwerdi.
I am gonna tell you my last dream…
I am an Aszzhole in search of Notoriety…
I work in a Website that offers news of IT and Open Source.
I pretend that I do it for the sake of love for IT, but the fact is that, I am expecting good revenues for the
future…
If not, why should I loose my time looking for IT news in other IT Web Sites that offer what I am not able to
offer… for the sake of these IT weirdos geeks and Open source-free computing fanboys…? c’mon…
I think I know more than the rest, of course… and I am always right!
Yes, I know more than anyone of you about Computers, and about anything else you can imagine! even If many people prove me the contrary, I am still right…
Me and my Mac go together everywhere, I even sleep with it, which is somehow problematic, cause as you can imagine, is not easy to have sexual relations tru an USB port, or a FireWire one… but I am in love anyway!…
Anything that is not Mac or commercial, is just wacko rubbish!
And, of course, is not going to offer me anything, because all these Open Source weirdos have no future, and are not gonna advertise in my site, or pay me money… I dont even talk about the FSF retarded hippies!
At best the big companies that now move to Linux, and pretend to be Open Source, worth a little bit, and may be a source of revenues in the future if the have some sucess…
Cheers…
P.S. Apple Rocks… Linux sucks… (MS is very good also, cause they have plenty of money, and are the pattern of our great western Businnes Economic and social system…)