

Ask HN: Making Server with open source? - hiteshtr

My organization currently own a server from Fujitsu with cent-OS 6, but Redhat hinder us to install open source software by saying that they will not provide support if we install patches and software&#x27;s from untested sources. So want to know what is the best list of open source software’s to implement a server with Ubuntu which should have mail server, firewall or watch-guard, ldap and webserver.
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akbar501
Mail: Postfix (my go to SMTP server). However, a lot of people like Exim as
well, but I've never got into it. Sendmail is powerful, but unwieldy. Postfix
is very simple to configure a basic email server, especially b/c RedHat does
such a great job with the defaults. However, be careful with security if you
expose your server to the Internet.

Firewall: IPTables if you're running a firewall on the box. However, if you're
running a firewall edge of network, then I'd go with a dedicated solution like
Shoreline, Smoothwall or ClarkConnect.

LDAP: OpenLDAP. By itself, OpenLDAP is not difficult. However, as you add
layers to it like TLS and Kerberos, etc. then the configuration becomes
obtuse.

Web server: Nginx (the current king), but Apache is still a strong choice.
Nginx works great with the newer frameworks where you're running it as a proxy
for your application server plus as a high performance static file server.
Apache is still solid if you're developing in PHP.

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hiteshtr
in web server i have read that using nginx as your front static file server
and apache as backend server is best choice ? And also can you tell which is
better Linux for server REHL(CentOS) or Ubuntu , as REHL provide out dated
softwares but Ubuntu is cutting edge ?

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devb0x
centos does necessitate that you sometimes pull an rpm from non standard
repo's such as EPEL or rpmforge, due to their focus on 'stability'

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phantom_oracle
Does Redhat offer a list of packages you can install from some type of app
store?

You should firstly find out what they mean by "untested sources", as this
could mean building code from source/tarballs and not using their 1-click
installer for software (where a lot of the software will likely be open source
in any case).

