88 lines
3.5 KiB
HTML
88 lines
3.5 KiB
HTML
<HTML>
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO 8859-1">
|
|
<META http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
|
|
<META name="author" lang="en" content="Michiel Broek">
|
|
<META name="copyright" lang="en" content="Copyright Michiel Broek">
|
|
<META name="description" lang="en" content="MBSE BBS Manual">
|
|
<META name="keywords" lang="en" content="MBSE BBS, MBSE, BBS, manual, fido, fidonet, gateway, tosser, mail, tic, mailer">
|
|
<TITLE>Linux distributions.</TITLE>
|
|
<LINK rel=stylesheet HREF="manual.css">
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
<BODY>
|
|
<BLOCKQUOTE>
|
|
<h5>Last update 29-Dec-2001</h5>
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>Unix Distributions.</H1>
|
|
<P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>Which distribution</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
Linux is available in several distributions, they all have advantages and
|
|
disadvantages for bbs use. Which distribution to pick is very personal.
|
|
Since late 2001 a port to FreeBSD is available, from version 0.33.19 this
|
|
port is ready to use.
|
|
You should also consider the fact if the bbs machine is the same machine on
|
|
which you do your daily work on or if you use a seperate system for the bbs.
|
|
I will describe the distributions below for use on dedicated bbs computers,
|
|
that means you don't do daily work on them and don't use them to play games.
|
|
Most important is that this is my personal view.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>Slackware</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
I am using MBSE BBS on several Slackware distributions. You can make a very small
|
|
setup for MBSE BBS like Zipslack. Not included is the mgetty package.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>Redhat and Mandrake</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
I write this as if these are the same which isn't true of course. From MBSE
|
|
BBS's point of view they are almost the same, so that's why I treat them as
|
|
the same distributions. For people with little Linux experience these
|
|
distributions are a good choice if you can spare the diskspace. I haven't
|
|
found a simple dedicated setup for the bbs, so the safest way is to install
|
|
allmost everything, which is quite simple. This will cost you about 1200 Megs.
|
|
Maybe that someone more experienced with these distro's can give more details
|
|
on how to build a small server. Please note that from RedHat 6.1 and up the
|
|
startup script (/etc/rc.d/init.d/mbsed) is different than before. Maybe
|
|
this is needed for Mandrake 6.1 and up too.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>SuSe</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
Since SuSE 7.1 the setup scripts are working and tested. Older distro's
|
|
might work.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>Debian</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
The installation works on a Debian 2.1 and 2.2 distribution without any problems.
|
|
How to build an optimized Debian system is not tested by me.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>FreeBSD</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
I test on a FreeBSD 3.2 stable release. Newer releases will not run on the
|
|
hardware I have available. (Don't ask me why, they crash during install).
|
|
The setup is quite simple, do a small setup (average user), and add some needed packages
|
|
from the ports collection such as gcc, mgetty, infozip etc. The test machine
|
|
has a 500 MB harddisk, about 250 MB is still free. Note that the older
|
|
precompiled mgetty packages may not always have Fidonet support compiled in.
|
|
You may need to build mgetty yourself if you have an older FreeBSD distribution.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3>Famous last words...</H3>
|
|
<P>
|
|
I don't have the diskspace for all kinds of Linux distributions to install
|
|
at the same time, with the current size of Linux, I only have 2 versions
|
|
installed. Also, I don't buy every new distro that's available. If you have
|
|
a problem with that, just send me the new distro on CD to test by snailmail.
|
|
<P> <P>
|
|
|
|
<A HREF="index.htm"><IMG SRC="images/b_arrow.gif" ALT="Back" border="0"> Go Back</A>
|
|
</BODY>
|
|
</HTML>
|
|
|