Cen Tos wrote:
I'm a relative newbie to all this so pardon me if the following are all
stupid questions.
Firstly, I'm setting up a web server and gone from planning to use
Ubuntu (due to some familiarity as a desktop at home) to CentOS based on
recommendations by experienced webhosters.
However now that I looked into CentOS, I find myself at a point where
it's transitting to a major new version. So the key question for me is,
should I wait for CentOS 5 to be released or just go for 4.4?
Being rather new to Linux, my attempts to try to figure out the
differences between the two has been rather futile since I can't readily
tell what is really important to me or not. All that I think I'm sure of
now is that 5 would support virtualization using Xen and 4.4 doesn't
have it. This alone is food for thought since the idea of being able to
compartalize each website in their own VM sounds good in the long run.
I'm tempted to wait for 5 since I'm reluctant to run the risk of having
to upgrade a live server to version 5 and have it failed specutacularly
if I screw it up. On the other hand, it's uncertain when 5 will be out
and definitely waiting more than another 2 weeks isn't quite acceptable
without compelling reasons.
Hence I'll appreciate it if the knowledgeable folks on this mailing list
can advise which is the wiser route to go.
Some additional information which may be relevant to the decision.
1. RAID : Was planning to run "hardware" RAID 1 on the server and has
noted comments that software RAID 1 on Linux may be better than raid 1
using onboard firmware controllers.
As you will discover reading Linux RAID documentation, onboard RAID is
not real hardware RAID (like an add-in card). They call it fakeraid. You
will almost certainly be better off with Linux software raid.
2. Software that would be running on the server would include Apache 2.x
with ASPx support, php 5.x, MySQL 5.x, Exim, ProFTPD, Direct Admin
(supposed to be developed on RH and one user apparently tested it to
work right out of the box with 5 Beta, part of the reason why I decided
to go with CentOS)
3. Hardware to be used would be Intel Core 2 Duo on an Asus P5B-VM-D0
(Q965, ICH8-D0, Intel GMA3000 GPU) with SATA hard disks.
Here is where you will run into a bunch o' trouble with CentOS 4.4 --
the kernel for that is 2.6.9. I'm pretty sure you would not be able to
support your mb and CPU out-of-the-box without a LOT of headache. Due to
your hardware, I suggest you wait a little until CentOS 5 has been used
by others with similar hardware. In fact I have a brand new system that
uses Abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard (Intel P965 Express north bridge, Intel
ICH8R south bridge, JMicron JMB363 for IDE), Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 3
Sata II disks. I fully expect to have my hands full getting this to work
even in CentOS 5, and I have tons of experience. So my advice is to let
others do the hard work for you and wait for the fruits of their labor.
I have recently put together another system that used an Asrock u-ATX
mb that uses the Nvidia NF6100-430 AM2 chipset to be used as a
firewall/DNS server/Mail server for a small network. This is currently
running under CentOS 4.4 .... BUT, I ended up building kernel 2.6.20.1
to better support my hardware (Nvidia onboard SATA controller, onboard
Nvidia gigabit LAN [forcedeth]. The system is running great, but it took
quite a bit of futzing to get it where it was more or less turnkey. And
the newer kernel breaks a couple of things (like hotplug for USB because
that subsystem on CentOS 4.4 is incompatible with the 2.6.20)
4. Network bandwidth control based on request IP or domains (i.e.
connections to IP #1 can be limited to 512Kbps, while connections to IP
#2 can be limited to 1024Kbps, or connections to www.domainA.com
<http://www.domainA.com> is limited to 256Kbps etc.
Netfilter will give you this ... I would suggest looking into the
Shorewall firewall [http://shorewall.net] for stuff like this. Really
wonderful set of software.
I will keep you updated on my progress with Intel P965/Core 2 Duo system
on CentOS 5 once it is released.
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