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I have a spare PC with:
400MHz PII
128Mb RAM
350Mb HD

I'd like to set up a server with apache, perl and mysql on this. Windows has too many overheads, would I be better off with BSD or Linux. Do you know of any distros that would make my life easier.

Therx

PS No the 300Mb HD didn't come with the computer but the original 10GB is in a new PC.

with 350mb, youd want a tiny distro, something without all the extra bloat. no x, etc, very minimal. a small openbsd server or something. i dongt know the state of linux distros as far as small installs go.

pico bsd would be good, its tiny.

maybe linux-from-scratch or something.

I've got NetBSD running with only 40Mb used. But it won't network with the rest of my network(Router + windows) If anyone has anyknowledge on this can you put me out of my missery. I'm doing this:-

ifconfig lc0 inet 10.0.0.100 netmask 255.0.0.0
route add default 10.0.0.1
route add -net 10.0.0 localhost
(10.0.0.1 is the router)

But when I do a ping to anything I get:-

ping: sendto: host is down

I know that the existing network works on netmask 255.0.0.0 so surely this should to.

Therx

EDIT : It does detect the network card

I 'd rather use class C ip-adresses, but class A is ok anyway as long as your router does proper NAT aka masquerading.

what is this 'route add -net 10.0.0 localhost' good for?

other question: have you already configured the firewall on this NetBSD? to my knowledge NetBSD closes all ICMP/TCP/UDP-Ports by default and you have to declare explicitly which traffic you want to accept on this machine. I'd wonder, If the incoming ping packets can't be received properly. But the machine then would say: ping: network unreachable. Or is it other on NetBSD?

Sorry its not clear but the router is a piece of hardware. This is my first attempt with BSD and its the only non-Windows computer on the network apart from the router. What do you mean by opening the ports? I haven't closed any

You can easy find out open ports on an other machine: a port scanner like nmap which should exist for NetBSD too.

As for closed/open ports: NetBSD has, like other Versions of BSD this POLICY concerning Network-Traffic and accepting TCP connections/UDP-Packets: DENY. BSD Boxes are configured by DEFAULT not to accept network packets from elsewhere except you tell them explititly to do.

What I mean with opening/closing ports: This is Firewall stuff: In linux it's commands like 'ipchains -A input -s 192.168.0.10 -d 212.17.92.108:80 -j DENY' which means: don't let packets from 192.168.0.10 pass to 212.17.92.108 port 80 (http).

I don't know how far your experience with networking is, so it is hard for me to decide the level of explanation. I don't want you feel like a dumbass.

As for the router: This is a dedicated piece of computer which task is firewalling and routing from external network (internet) to your internal network (intranet). It is admiistratable by a sort of terminal or web interface isn't it?

Yeh(its a SMC7401BRA). I can ping the router from all other machines. I have done no changes to the NetBSD after install. I can understand Linux networking but Linux is too big for my HD. What I need, if you don't mind, is the commands to setup the adapter (lc0) which has been detected by the kernel so that it links in to a network 10.0.0.x with subnet mask 255.0.0.0 and default gateway(the router) 10.0.0.1

Thanks in advance

i only ever ran netbsd on my sparcstation and didnt like it. freebsd on all my x86 boxes.

http://www.mclink.it/personal/MG2508/nbsdeng/netbsd.html

therx, I 've done some googling to find some ressources which are handy and cover also what you need. Maybe this document is of use to you. At a glance I have seen that it covers NetBSD Networking too.

Stay safe.