The Perfect Setup - SUSE 9.3

Author: Falko Timme

This is a "copy & paste" HowTo! The easiest way to follow this tutorial is to use a command line client/SSH client (like PuTTY for Windows) and simply copy and paste the commands (except where you have to provide own information like IP addresses, hostnames, passwords,...). This helps to avoid typos.

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Last edited: 07/20/2005

This is a detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a SUSE 9.3 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). In addition to that I will show how to use Debian's package manager apt on an rpm-based system because it takes care of package dependencies automagically which can save a lot of trouble.

I will use the following software:

Web Server: Apache 2.0.x
Mail Server: Postfix (easier to configure than sendmail; has a shorter history of security holes than sendmail)
DNS Server: BIND9
FTP Server: proftpd (ISPConfig will not work with vsftpd on SUSE 9.2)
POP3/IMAP: I will use Maildir format and therefore install Courier-POP3/Courier-IMAP.
Webalizer for web site statistics

In the end you should have a system that works reliably and is ready for the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

Requirements

To install such a system you will need the following:

SUSE 9.3. I downloaded the 5 CD iso images from here: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/9.3/iso/
an internet connection...

1 The Base System

Boot from your first SUSE 9.3-CD and select Installation from the boot screen:

Accept the license:

The SUSE installer (called YaST - Yet another Setup Tool) starts.

Select your language:

Skip the media check:

The installer analyzes your system and makes some automatic installation decicions which it lists on the following screen (Installation Settings). You can change each of its choices by navigating to the appropriate headline. First, I change the keyboard layout (I don't have an English (US) keyboard...):

I select my new keyboard layout and click on Accept:

Then I want to have a look at the partitioning. You can accept YaST's proposal or create your own partitions. In this case, I accept YaST's proposal. For my purposes one big /-partition and a swap partition are a good choice:

Next, I adjust the time zone:

Back on the Installation Settings screen, you can also choose the software you want to install if you know what you are doing. In this example, I will leave YaST's package choice unchanged. I will install the software I need to run a web/email/ftp server manually after the base installation has finished. So we click on Accept as we're done here:

Accept the flash-player license next:

Click on Install:

The hard disk is being formatted:

The package installation starts:

After the basic package installation the system reboots. Remove the SuSE CD and go sure to boot from the hard disk:

The Perfect Setup - SUSE 9.3