{"id":79,"date":"2009-02-07T16:42:43","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T05:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=79"},"modified":"2009-02-07T16:42:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T05:42:43","slug":"distribution-plug-sme-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/02\/07\/distribution-plug-sme-server\/","title":{"rendered":"Distribution plug &#8211; SME Server"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime in 2003 I installed my last (and possibly last <em>ever<\/em>) Linux desktop machine. Having been a fan of Linux for a long time, I had started to become increasingly disillusioned in its failings as a desktop OS, particularly when it came to things that should have been simple, such as plugging in an iPod, watching a movie, or synching a Palm Pilot. After seeing time and time again the lack of issues my partner had with Mac OS X, I finally took the plunge, bought an eMac, and have since sworn off any other OS for my desktop.<\/p>\n<p><em>That being said<\/em>, I&#8217;ve been using a Linux distribution called <a title=\"SME Server\" href=\"http:\/\/wiki.contribs.org\/Main_Page\" target=\"_blank\">SME Server<\/a> (previously known as e-smith) for over a decade now. This is a server distribution, but not the average server style distribution you may be thinking of. It&#8217;s not designed for use with a commercial database, nor as even a workgroup, let alone enterprise backup server, and certainly not as a high performance computing server.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a workgroup server with one explicit function in mind: a single server that covers all the &#8216;basics&#8217; in a small environment. It handles all of the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Internet connectivity &#8211; dialup, DSL or ethernet, with full proxying<\/li>\n<li>Internet security &#8211; SPAM filtering, strong port lockdown, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Users and groups<\/li>\n<li>Fileserving with anti-virus options<\/li>\n<li>IMAP and POP email<\/li>\n<li>Port redirection\/pass through<\/li>\n<li>Web site hosting<\/li>\n<li>DNS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Plus probably more that to this day I&#8217;ve not needed to discover. Almost all functions are readily controllable via its simple web interface, meaning that basic administration doesn&#8217;t even require system administration skills. (Being free, it&#8217;s also considerably cheaper than Windows or even Mac OS X.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s <em>damn simple<\/em> &#8211; boot from the CD\/ISO, agree to really install, and it will blow away the contents of the hard drive and create a machine in its image. If you&#8217;ve got two hard drives, it automatically configures mirroring; if you&#8217;ve only got one, it still configures mirroring so that if you add another hard drive later it can enable mirroring.<\/p>\n<p>It can even run in VMware if you&#8217;re so inclined and you can dedicate a NIC to it for connectivity to a DSL modem (if necessary). With a bit of kludging, you can even install NetWorker on it if you need to (the same sort of kludging you need to do to install NetWorker on ESX).<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re in a situation where you&#8217;re needing to install some basic server (e.g., for a charity, for home, as part of a small consulting job), I&#8217;d thoroughly recommend that you give SME Server a good close look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime in 2003 I installed my last (and possibly last ever) Linux desktop machine. Having been a fan of Linux&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[1248,641,701],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-thoughts","category-linux","tag-linux","tag-non-backup","tag-operating-systems"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- All in One SEO 4.9.10 - aioseo.com -->\n\t<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"max-image-preview:large\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Preston de Guise\"\/>\n\t<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/02\/07\/distribution-plug-sme-server\/\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"generator\" content=\"All in One SEO (AIOSEO) 4.9.10\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Data Protection Hub | All things Data Protection\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Distribution plug \u2013 SME Server | Data Protection Hub\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/02\/07\/distribution-plug-sme-server\/\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-07T05:42:43+00:00\" \/>\n\t\t<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2009-02-07T05:42:43+00:00\" \/>\n\t\t<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n\t\t<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Distribution plug \u2013 SME Server | Data Protection Hub\" \/>\n\t\t<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"aioseo-schema\">\n\t\t\t{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nsrd.info\\\/blog\\\/2009\\\/02\\\/07\\\/distribution-plug-sme-server\\\/#article\",\"name\":\"Distribution plug \\u2013 SME Server | Data Protection Hub\",\"headline\":\"Distribution plug &#8211; 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