TweakHound’s Blog

This is a quick how-to on setting up openSUSE 10.3 as a Home Server.
Let me rephrase that… a secure, 100% FREE Home Server (2 things Windows Home Server can’t claim).

Click on pic for a larger image.

The machine:
openSUSE doesn’t require much hardware-wise to run a Home Server.

Asus TUSL2-C
1.2 Celeron
512MB Memory
ATI Radeon 7000
No sound card.
D-Link DGE-530T Gigabit NIC
Promise ATA133 ATA Card
Maxtor 80GB, Maxtor 40GB, Maxtor 200GB
Liteon DVD-RW

Printers:
HP Officejet 4110
HP Deskjet 3745 printer

The Install:
It couldn’t get any easier. I have 3 hard drives, I partitioned them like this:
1 (80GB) – / , /home , /home/myname/xzy
2 (40GB) – /home/myname/abc
3 (200GB)- swap , /home/myname/mno

Boot – from MBR

Packages:
From the main screen I deslected:
-Novel AppArmor
-Multimedia
-Office Software
-Desktop Effects
-Graphics
-Games

I selected:
-File Server
-Print Server
(selecting these will install everything you need to have a file and print server)

Next I clicked the details button and deselected various things that aren’t needed i.e. realplayer, etc.. I also did a search for beagle and deslected it and anything related to it.

Click on pic for a larger image.

Post install:
All updates were applied during installation including a new kernel, double-checked and none available.
Next I set up software sources via the Community Repos button in YAST.
I set up Samba just like I do in my guide, except, while in Swat I did the following differently…
Under Browse Options:
-Set OS Level to 32.
-Set preferred master and local master to Yes.

Still in Swat, on the Printers page I changed the ‘guest OK’ box to Yes.

Other Network Settings:
– In YAST configure network card for a static IP Address.
(this allows me to specify an IP Address instead of a machine name when setting the printer on other boxes)

Anti-Virus
Most people agree Linux doesn’t need an anti-virus application. However, in a situation where a Linux computer may share files with a Windows computer (either through dual-boot or as a file server) having an anti-virus is a good idea. There are several anti-virus applications for Linux, the most popular being Clamav (or it’s KDE variant KlamAV). These applications can scan your files for viruses ensuring you don’t harm your Windows computers. But, I have run in to a problem. Most (if not all) of these applications have what is called “on access” scanning capability. In practice it means that files are scanned as they are accessed, I’m sure you can see the benefit in that. This capability requires the installation and configuration of Dazuko, and that is the problem. After hours of web surfing and trial and error I was finally able to get Dazuko and “on access” scanning to work, BUT, in the end I had to disable selinux (edit boot to selinux=0). This in effect weakens the security of the Linux box to protect the Windows environment which I found to be unacceptable. In addition, for openSUSE it seems that it is incompatible with AppArmor (but I don’t use it). I’m not going to get into the argument as to where the fault for this problem lies, I’m just letting you know it is there to save you the
hassle and wasted time of trying to mess with this. So I restored from an image and I’m using KlamAV (installed via YAST) with a regular scan enabled.

Conclusion
That’s it. All boxes on my net (Windows and Linux) successfully network to and from the server and print perfectly.
I would appreciate any feedback or tips you might have.
Eric