The server can work with any Linux distribution, but we have chosen to use the distribution Mandrake, which has the advantage of being simple to install, and includes a multitude of pre-installed applications.
You can find this distribution:
Before installing, it may be useful to make a list of devices found in your machine and to note their reference numbers and characteristics (the hard drives, the graphics card, the sound card, etc.)
To start installation, you will need to partition your hard drive (see the article on Fdisk) in order to separate the data which corresponds to applications, temporary files, or virtual memory (swap).
Let's say that the hard drive is 10GB and that it includes:
Here are the characteristics of the partitions:
Type of partition | Size | Mount point |
---|---|---|
Linux | 32 MB | /boot |
Linux swap | 128 MB | - |
Linux swap | 128 MB | - |
Linux Ext | - | - |
Linux | 4320 MB | / |
Linux | 4096 MB | home |
Linux | 512 MB | /tmp |
Linux | 1024 MB | /var |
Installing Mandrake is entirely graphical, so all you need to do is follow the steps and enter the right options:
Then, log in as root (superuser) with the password that you provided at the time of installation.
Be default, the superuser, for security reasons, cannot log in to the server by telnet or FTP. For practical reasons, and for as long the entire intranet is not connected to the Internet, we will temporarily give these rights to the user root.
To authorize the superuser to log in by telnet, you have to edit the file /etc/pam.d/login and add the following line:
#auth required /lib/security/pam_securetty.so
To authorize the superuser to log in by FTP, you have to edit the file /etc/ftpusers and add the following line:
#root
In order to give the server a certain measure of security, you will need to create users and groups which can be granted only the permissions they need.
First, you have to create a group called users which will include all users on the intranet. This lets you define permissions for every user belonging to this group, all in one go. To create this group (it might already exist), use the following syntax:
groupadd users
Then, create a directory called /etc/skel_intranet. This will contain the structure (called the skeleton) for each user's work directory. Here are all the commands that can be used to create it:
cp -r /etc/skel /etc/skel_intranetThese commands can be used to create a directory called public_html within the directory skel_intranet, which can contain the user's personal page, as well as the directory Maildir (and its subdirectories new, cur and tmp) for the user's email. You can, of course, add additional directories to the skeleton if need be.
cd /etc/skel_intranet
mkdir public_html
mkdir public_html/images
chmod -R 755 public_html
mkdir Maildir
mkdir Maildir/new
mkdir Maildir/cur
mkdir Maildir/tmp
Then, create each of your users with the following command:
useradd smith -G users -m -u 500
-k /etc/skel_intranet
-c "Smith John, Accounting Dept., Workstation: 89654"
The desired rights must be added to the user's account with the command:
chmod 755 /home/smith
![]() | You can delete a user at any moment with the command:
userdel -r toto |
Michel Maudet
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