pickin a linux server for work

hypermegachi · 2006-01-17 20:11:11

hey all! my workplace is pretty windows centric, and we're deciding to slowly move towards linux and linux dev tools to save costs in licensing (cuz gcc kicks butt!)

anyways, here's the criteria i need
1) security
2) stability
3) support

my co-workers do not know much about linux works, just a general idea. i have to option of choosing whichever distro i deem best. so far, my options include fedora, debian, ubuntu, slackware, arch.

this is a standard server that i will be running. so...subversion, apache, ssh, mysql, standard stuff, so package availability is not a problem.

what do you guys think have having arch run as the server? it seems like the bleeding-edgeness of arch but not make it a viable choice as a stable server. but then again, i don't want it outdated like debian stable.

i just tried installing ubuntu on my test system. first let me give props to all the arch developers. you really don't appreciate the beauty of arch until you get to see how many less steps are required to compile your own kernel and install it using the package manager. nonetheless, i haven't had anything wrong happen with ubuntu. although i am worried about the potential problems when i try to do a dist-upgrade (since ubuntu branches off from debian-sid and back in)

anyways, do you guys have any ideas/suggestions?

Gullible Jones · 2006-01-17 20:48:23

Arch: Small user base -> not enough support. Out.

Ubuntu: Maybe. I've heard conflicting reports on its stability though.

Debian: Testing branch is alright, but some things in it are outdated, and some are actually unstable versions for some stupid reason...

Slackware: reasonably current, stable as a rock, performs very well. Package management can be a pain, but Slackpkg (in the "extra" section) is fine if you already know the deps, and Swaret can take care of it if you need dependency resolution.

Fedora: I've heard it's getting a bit more experimental as of now, though I can't back up these claims.

BTW, you might also be interested in Vector Linux, which is based on Slackware.

(And stay the hell away from Gentoo. Not that you'd need anyone to tell you... )

Jefg60 · 2006-01-17 20:54:51

id stick with something you can buy support for. eg SUSE / redhat. arch is great as a home server but I wouldnt use it for mission critical stuff, its too bleeding edge and not established enough. Plus it would be nice to have the option to buy support in a business environment for those times when you dont have time to fiddle around trying to find out whats broken, and need to be able to call up an expert and get it sorted asap.

Neuro · 2006-01-17 21:14:07

Jefg60 wrote:

id stick with something you can buy support for. eg SUSE / redhat. arch is great as a home server but I wouldnt use it for mission critical stuff, its too bleeding edge and not established enough. Plus it would be nice to have the option to buy support in a business environment for those times when you dont have time to fiddle around trying to find out whats broken, and need to be able to call up an expert and get it sorted asap.

I second that. Supporting your fav distro on a production server can be ok as far as:
1. you have the right knowledge to do so
2. you always have time to do it
3. no one is supposed to support the machine after you move jobs/projects

cactus · 2006-01-17 21:37:08

i would go with centos. just a rebunde (recompile) of redhat enterprise. you get redhat compatability, stability, and vendor support... but it is free.

if you need redhat support in the future, the migration strategy is dead simple.

same argument (more or less) for opensuse and suse...
although i personally cant stand yast

hypermegachi · 2006-01-17 21:51:31

i've looked at centos...but their site doesn't provide any commercial support..."This Section or Page is coming soon." hehehe

so far ubuntu looks promosing. they have commercial support available, as well as 18 month support for each release. plus they have wads of cash behind them and currently lots of momentum.

i was a slacker before i met with arch, so i don't mind that. although i don't really like the fact that it's done by a single person. props to Pat for such a great distro, but i think they need some kinda core group or something. of course i could be completely wrong, someone correct me if i am.

anyways, time to read the vector website...

Euphoric Nightmare · 2006-01-18 03:44:57

Arch? Why Not?

It's the most stable I've used including ubuntu which you've mentioned.

The only problem I could possibly see is that every now and then we have problems with new packages. Its a price to pay for bleeding edge.

I decided to stop updating my webserver a few months ago, and i haven't crashed it yet.

However, I also think that (and you all are going to hate me for this) Gentoo would be a decent choice if you have the time. You've got a huge user base, and lots of documentation. Better yet go with a popular *BSD. I've never actually used them, but their user's claim great stability and security.

elasticdog · 2006-01-18 04:04:37

I agree with many of the points here...support is definitely something to at least think about. Even if you're not worried about it, there might be other higher-ups at the workplace who want that kind of insurance for a mission-critical server. As mentioned, picking a distro that will be easy for others to maintain and work with could also be influencial...you might not always be there to fix things when they go wrong.

As far as stability goes, I think rolling-release distros aren't necessarily bad for situations like this...keep in mind that you don't have to upgrade all the time. If you've got a stable setup, then stick with it until your needs change or you find it necessary due to security flaws, etc.

Security I don't know too much about, but aside from that, pick what you're comfortable with...

scottro · 2006-01-18 05:19:05

As your most familiar with Arch and Slackware, I would pick one of them.
The only drawback is if paid support is going to be a big issue. However, especially if you have a test machine available, you'll be happiest with what you know, and most comfortable with fixing it when things happen.

However, elastic dog makes the excellent point--even though consultants are often no more knowledgeable about a subject than you are, it shows you are making best effort--it also makes the bosses more comfortable, which can be important.

Arch is as or more secure than any of the other choices, simply because it has so few services running by default. You can use firestarter or something to build a firewall that will be similar to a default RH or SuSE one.

Arch's advantages are the small base install with an intelligent choice of base packages, and ease of updating.

The only negative is the lack of "official" support.

I use Arch at work for some non-mission critical stuff. I use FreeBSD on some higher end servers, because I am most familiar with it. However, at times, we need a low end machine to work as a file server on one subnet or another, and at times like that the quick, small install and ease of adding samba with pacman led me to use Arch for those machines. On the other hand, they're running nothing but samba and they don't really do anything else.

Another brief Arch success story though--when one of the divisions had to change floors, the FreeBSD box that did DHCP for two floors had to be moved. I prepared a small box with Arch, which probably took less than an hour from booting with the install CD, and threw it into place

Bralkein · 2006-01-19 02:45:03

From the critera you've given, I would suggest Slackware, as it's been fairly good to me on the server front. However, I don't understand your problem with Debian stable. I wouldn't use it as a desktop OS if you paid me, it's just too out of touch, I always want the latest version of KDE, kernel, X.org etc., but on a server I reckon it's all about Debian stable man.

It will just sit there and serve and serve and serve and never ever go wrong. There's a reason why the release cycle is so long - when Debian say stable, they really seem like they mean it!

LB06 · 2006-01-19 09:16:31

Although I couldn't be happier running Arch on my laptop, I would not even think about running it on any critical server. On a server you need not only stable packages, you first and foremost need a stable (and secure!) environment. Something which Arch simply does not provide. And of course you need official support (well, depending on the size of your enterprise). Many changes, and no oppotunity to test them, because a server does not get rebooted often.

You also need to keep in mind what the advantages are of Arch.
- Ease of maintainability
- Up to date-ness
- Speed

The first 2 advantages are not valid for a server. I mean, ask yourself: is it really necessairy to be bleeding edge? And is it worth the maintainance troubles? Arch is only easy to maintain if you don't mind an occasional breakage.

hypermegachi · 2006-01-19 18:31:15

my workplace is a medium sized company. we have a w2k3 server set up for about 50 users. there are only about 10 developers.

to start off i'm gonna run:
- subversion
- ssh
- trac/flyspray/mantis/bugzilla (haven't decided)
- ftp
- firewall

as you can see, pretty simple...so stability shouldn't be a problem at all.

what i'm more concerned about is security. ubuntu/debian get security and kernel patches all the time. is this just a debian thing, or does arch get hit with all these security problems as well?

_Gandalf_ · 2006-01-19 19:34:58

All distros are quite the same they differ by the package manager and speed, I vote for Arch and debian, but let me give you a little advise, whenever u hear "rpm, you, yast, apt4get etc.." (aka fedora, mandriva, suse and all rpm based distro) Just run away coz they sucks!!

Moo-Crumpus · 2006-01-19 20:26:55

Honestly, you can only choose between debian STABLE (mature) or suse / red hat (support but $$$). Don't mess with a bleeding edge system if you have to count on it 24x7.

_Gandalf_ · 2006-01-19 20:29:52

@Moo-Crumpus if i would u i wouldn't have suggested suse / redhat, u don't want him to dig into rpm hell right?

hypermegachi · 2006-01-19 20:39:57

all other package managers are hell once you're tried pacman. what i like about pacman is that it remembers orphans. a simple -Rs will remove everything that the package depends on, as along as another package doesn't depend on it. and there's the even more powerful -c option.

debian has deborphan, which has to search and "guess" the orphans. it seems like with debian you end up with a lot of useless packages after a while if you don't keep track yourself.

hell, i might even put freebsd on this thing

LB06 · 2006-01-19 20:50:54

hypermegachi wrote:

my workplace is a medium sized company. we have a w2k3 server set up for about 50 users. there are only about 10 developers.
to start off i'm gonna run:
- subversion
- ssh
- trac/flyspray/mantis/bugzilla (haven't decided)
- ftp
- firewall
as you can see, pretty simple...so stability shouldn't be a problem at all.
what i'm more concerned about is security. ubuntu/debian get security and kernel patches all the time. is this just a debian thing, or does arch get hit with all these security problems as well?

Arch generally gets security updates pretty fast, because it tends to be so bleeding edge. But the problem is that it doesn't evolve around security. So if a security vulnerability is found, arch has to wait for the next release of that piece of software. Debian often patches their packages with only the security patch. The advantage is that, since no new features are added, it is less likely that new bugs/vulnerabilities arise. So Debian goes from x.y.z-p to x.y.z-(p+1), while Arch goes from x.y.z-p to x.y.(z+1)-1. The former is released before or sometimes on the same date as the latter, which means high security.

But as far as I can see it, your requirements are not really key operational (air line reservation system, dell.com), but rather supporting, so you could use Arch. But you are going to need a test system to test pacman upgrades on, which will probably cost more resources (in terms of € or $ and in terms of labour), than just running RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu or Debian with commercial support (which won't need a test system).

LB06 · 2006-01-19 20:57:24

Oh c'mon. Please stop bashing RPM's. Sure, it's not as good as pacman, but then again, it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. Even Debian packages are "converging" toward the so called RPM hell (Deb vs Ubuntu), which proves that dpkg isn't inherently better than rpm. Hell, I'm sure that the same could happen to pacman, if there are enough forks.

_Gandalf_ · 2006-01-19 21:02:21

dpkg is like rpm (hell) ? hmmmm ... Cool Joke

LB06 · 2006-01-19 23:11:37

_Gandalf_ wrote:

dpkg is like rpm (hell) ? hmmmm ... Cool Joke

Yeah, funny huh? NOT! It's real. Face it. Not on such a large scale, but all I'm saying that dpkg has the same potential.

Lone_Wolf · 2006-01-19 23:29:42

Novell/Suse has have special server versions. Stability and updates are handled differently than with the dektop versions.
I imagine RH works similar.

rpm-hell is less likely for such products.

Check out SLES or Novell OES.

Gullible Jones · 2006-01-20 00:12:52

CentOS and White Box look potentially promising, but if you don't want an RPM-based distro, they're definitely out, being RHEL clones.

hypermegachi · 2006-01-20 00:55:18

as long as it works, i don't have a problem. i've tried fedora, and used their bleeding rawhide repositories. i remember it always working. it never broke anything, and when it did, it was easy to rollback to a previous version of the broken package.

what drove me away was it was very hard for me to fine-tune and customize (without breaking the system midway).

slackware has always been the "backup" distro when all else fails. that was until i found arch.

a lot of people here are mentioning RHEL & derivatives. i've never tried it. how easy is it to maintain and keep up to date?

pikass · 2006-01-20 09:00:14

hypermegachi wrote:

debian has deborphan, which has to search and "guess" the orphans. it seems like with debian you end up with a lot of useless packages after a while if you don't keep track yourself.

Not true if you use the recommended aptitude.

I would strongly consider ubuntu. They offer support and 5 years security fixes for their next release. So below the line, you have the advantages of RH/Suse + good package management + faster security fixes then Debian (although they became better lately)

Moo-Crumpus · 2006-01-20 11:42:09

_Gandalf_ wrote:

@Moo-Crumpus if i would u i wouldn't have suggested suse / redhat, u don't want him to dig into rpm hell right?

I don't talk about the desktop suse / redhat. The enterprise ones have rare changes, and novell / redhat take mo' care of 'em. Never had any rpm hell with them, as I had with desktop suse / redhat.

Furthermore, you are allways well adviced to run them as virtual machines, so you can duplicate each one, update it, and delete the old versions in case of success.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-01-17 20:11:11

pickin a linux server for work

#2 2006-01-17 20:48:23

Re: pickin a linux server for work

#3 2006-01-17 20:54:51

Re: pickin a linux server for work

#4 2006-01-17 21:14:07

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#5 2006-01-17 21:37:08

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#6 2006-01-17 21:51:31

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#7 2006-01-18 03:44:57

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#8 2006-01-18 04:04:37

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