RH6.1&7 proxy+ email in middle of NT4 NW

[Luke_9]

Hi all. I recently inherited a NW position, where our DNS, Gateway, proxy, & E mail are tied to an HP Netserver+NT4/Dell+W2000 NW.

RH is running only in text mode, theres no SAMBA, and the only info I have besides books, is a listing of all IP addresses and the Gateway info. Linuxconfig, sendmail 8, and fetchmail3(?)are running now, and IPchains.

The Linux services have 99% uptime, which is great, and I am happy to learn the system & issues, but if a problem arises, it is VERY difficult to administer, and can take a while too.
I am thinking of scraping the Linux, for a MSFT email+proxy client, and running a full new version of RH on a seperate server to learn on, then do it all up properly when I can navigate the RH file structure and debug simple issues. I think a MSFT+RH NW configured with all the necessary utilites would be great, instead of a jumble of different RH OS's running the different services mentioned.
(RH7.0-proxy, RH6.1& 6.2-DNS+Gateway+SMTP)

-Does full RH graphical support make Admin. any eaier?
-Any suggestions?
Thank you in advance.

[Paul R. Dittrich]

If I understood your description correctly, it sounds like your Linux box is the network firewall (why else run ipchains?)

You don't need (or even want) samba on a firewall box and M$FT proxy won't give you any meaningful protection for the network. Neither am I a big fan of using X on firewalls which means no GUI interface.

By all means go ahead and bring up a new box running RH 7.2 but install it *parallel* to the existing one. When you have a config you want to test it's much less stressful on you to have a known working fallback system.

HTH,
Paul

[Luke_9]

Yes, your right. Thats a good idea to keep current config as an operational backup.
I dont have a choice.
I was hoping SAMBA might enable DNS/Proxy info to be admin. or seen through WinNT, or mail & user accounts to be admin. through NT, but I guess not.
Linuxconf is helpful though, so it isnt all bad.
Thank you.