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Date:      Tue, 24 Sep 1996 15:33:58 -0700
From:      Doug Wellington <doug@sun1paztcn.wr.usgs.gov>
To:        hmmm <hmmm@alaska.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.org, doug@sun1paztcn.wr.usgs.gov
Subject:   Re: www/email d
Message-ID:  <9609242233.AA09152@sun1paztcn.wr.usgs.gov>
In-Reply-To: "Your message of Tue, 24 Sep 1996 18:26:00 GMT." <Pine.BSF.3.95.960924181548.297A-100000@hmmm.alaska.net>

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Previously:
>i getting very confused.  all i want to do is set up the MINIMAL
>www/email setup between 3 fbsd machines.  i want 1 to be a server,
>and 2 to function as clients.  i'd like to use what comes with
>a minimum install.

Well, there's a bunch of different ways to solve this...  (I'm sure
you'll get as many different types of solutions as you get replies!)

First, email:  You'll need to run something to control email - that
could be sendmail, or you could use a simpler emailer like smail or
qmail.  If you want to leave all the mail on the "server" box, you'll
have to provide some way for the two "client" boxes to retrieve it.
That can be done by running popper on the server and setting up the
two clients to use popmail to retrieve the mail.  You should set up
accounts for all users on the server box so that mail can be stored
for them.

Another way to provide mail to the client computers is to use NFS to
"export" the mail directory on the server so that the two clients can
mount that directory.  That way, it looks like the mail is stored
directly on the client boxes.  Then you wouldn't have to run popper.

Yet another way is to run sendmail on all three boxes, but that seems
like a little overkill in your case...


Second, www:  If you are just doing some simple html pages, I'd suggest
using Plexus, which is a web server written in Perl.  If you want to
do involved web stuff, with cgi programs and all that, you should run
Apache...


>seems like someone said inetd can do this ...

Hmm...  inetd can do what?   Inetd is a "dispatcher" - that is, it
answers incoming network connections and determines what protocol is
wanted and what program can provide that protocol.  You can indeed set
inetd up to take care of both email and www, but that is usually too
slow...  Sendmail and apache both run as daemons, which means they
run all the time and answer email and www requests without getting
inetd involved.  (Much faster that way.)  Actually, popper is
usually set up in inetd, because it doesn't need to run all the
time and if you run the tcp_wrapper program, you can control access
to popper.  (You usually want to allow anyone to send you mail, but
not just anyone should be able to retrieve it - the combination of
tcp_wrapper and passwd protection should control email retrieval
pretty well...)


>do i need some crazy emaild daemon, or is sendmail good enough?

Heehee, some people would say that sendmail IS a crazy emaild daemon!

Let me know if I can help confuse you any more...

-Doug

Doug Wellington
doug@sun1paztcn.wr.usgs.gov
System and Network Administrator
US Geological Survey, Tucson, AZ Project Office

According to proposed Federal guidelines, this message is a "non-record".
Hmm, I wonder if _everything_ I say is a "non-record"...?

FreeBSD and Apache - the best real tools for the virtual world!
Check out www.freebsd.org and www.apache.org...

Chuck - Lord of Darkness?  Or Lord of Cuteness?



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