ThePenguinCometh
There is no escape
Hey, I've just managed to blag my way into a sysadmin job. :D Well, technically I'll be doing part-time voluntary work for a local school but I spend all my free time in front of a computer anyway so what the hell.
They've got a fairly sizeable and mis-matched collection of machines, twenty to thirty, some of which share a dial-up line except for one which has a broadband connection. What they're looking at is getting a whole bunch of wireless hubs/PCI cards and getting all the machines to share the same broadband connection, primarily for email. The only problem is that I've never networked two MS boxes together before in my life and now I have the problem of setting up an e-mail server for everything from old Win 95 boxes to Win XP laptops using wireless technology. My only achievements in networking is setting up a small Slackware network in my own bedroom which took me a week to figure out and few minutes to actually do! What I have read about Windows networking is probably quite biased, given that they're the "I-spent-weeks-trying-to-set-up-a-Windows
-network-gave-up-in-utter-desperation-tried-Linux-instead-and-finished-it-in-a-few-minutes" type postings that you find all the time on Linux forums but I'm still wary of my chances of getting this project to go smoothly. Unfortunately the ICT teacher who is calling the shots (and who seems to know her stuff, impressively) wasn't interested in my attempts to evangelize The Way of the Penguin (her excuse being that they had just spent a lot of money of Windows software - hah!) though I'll be damned if I don't smuggle at least one Linux box in there somewhere before too long, even if it means sacraficing one of my own.
My question therefore is whether networking under Windows really is the it-does-or-it-doesn't affair that I've been educated into believing and does anybody know where I can find a tutorial on setting up an email server under the conditions outlined above. I looked under "C:\Program Files\doc\HOWTOs" but the directory doesn't exist. :) Oh yeah, everyone uses either Outlook or Outlook Express but I'll try and smuggle Thunderbird in there somewhere (card-carrying member of the Free Software Guerillas at your service!).
Alternatively, this is one for Anti-Trend if you come across this, would it be easier to have a Linux box running Samba, DHCP (for the laptops) and the email server and have all the MS boxes connect directly to that? I've only ever had a brief look at using Samba and the Official Samba-3 HOWTO is HUGE. I really don't have a problem personally getting into studying it but I'd rather get something up and running quickly rather then spending several weeks trying to get everything going by which point they've found a trained MS engineer whose total answer to everything will be to get the school to pay for expensive software/hardware upgrades. All I need on the short-term is something quick-and-dirty that will get some results at least until such time as they decide to hire me (ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease). :good:
They've got a fairly sizeable and mis-matched collection of machines, twenty to thirty, some of which share a dial-up line except for one which has a broadband connection. What they're looking at is getting a whole bunch of wireless hubs/PCI cards and getting all the machines to share the same broadband connection, primarily for email. The only problem is that I've never networked two MS boxes together before in my life and now I have the problem of setting up an e-mail server for everything from old Win 95 boxes to Win XP laptops using wireless technology. My only achievements in networking is setting up a small Slackware network in my own bedroom which took me a week to figure out and few minutes to actually do! What I have read about Windows networking is probably quite biased, given that they're the "I-spent-weeks-trying-to-set-up-a-Windows
-network-gave-up-in-utter-desperation-tried-Linux-instead-and-finished-it-in-a-few-minutes" type postings that you find all the time on Linux forums but I'm still wary of my chances of getting this project to go smoothly. Unfortunately the ICT teacher who is calling the shots (and who seems to know her stuff, impressively) wasn't interested in my attempts to evangelize The Way of the Penguin (her excuse being that they had just spent a lot of money of Windows software - hah!) though I'll be damned if I don't smuggle at least one Linux box in there somewhere before too long, even if it means sacraficing one of my own.
My question therefore is whether networking under Windows really is the it-does-or-it-doesn't affair that I've been educated into believing and does anybody know where I can find a tutorial on setting up an email server under the conditions outlined above. I looked under "C:\Program Files\doc\HOWTOs" but the directory doesn't exist. :) Oh yeah, everyone uses either Outlook or Outlook Express but I'll try and smuggle Thunderbird in there somewhere (card-carrying member of the Free Software Guerillas at your service!).
Alternatively, this is one for Anti-Trend if you come across this, would it be easier to have a Linux box running Samba, DHCP (for the laptops) and the email server and have all the MS boxes connect directly to that? I've only ever had a brief look at using Samba and the Official Samba-3 HOWTO is HUGE. I really don't have a problem personally getting into studying it but I'd rather get something up and running quickly rather then spending several weeks trying to get everything going by which point they've found a trained MS engineer whose total answer to everything will be to get the school to pay for expensive software/hardware upgrades. All I need on the short-term is something quick-and-dirty that will get some results at least until such time as they decide to hire me (ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease). :good:
