RedHat 7.0 is out as of the beginning of October, 2000. I have heard a significant number of complaints about it's stability, however, and it looks like a typical RedHat point-zero release. I would recommend not upgrading main systems to it for at least another 2 months or so, until RedHat has put out bugfix and update packages and generally stabilized it.

As you might have guessed, I run RedHat Linux at home. Quite a few XMission users have requested help configuring various parts of RedHat Linux to work with XMission's systems, and since I had to configure those parts myself I decided to put up a page outlining what I'd done so that others wouldn't have to do as much work. One of the things to note here is that I've coded various XMission-specific things such as server names, DNS server IP addresses, network numbers and other things into the configuration. This eliminates the need to work out what those values should be for XMission users, but users of other ISPs who use these pages will need to alter those values in the configuration files.

This list is far from complete. It's basically those things that I've done and felt inclined to tidy up and make available. Some items in the list don't have hyperlinks in them. Those are items that I plan to do but haven't gotten to yet. If you have something you'd like to see up here that isn't in the list, e-mail me about it. I'm usually open to polite requests, time and schedule permitting.

• PPP configuration by modifying the configuration files directly. Includes instructions on setting up the basic Gnome PPP Dialer applet to toggle your connection on/off.
• Adding items to the system startup, both to the site-local startup file and as seperate items that can be controlled through the run-level editor. This is also a short introduction to some aspects of the startup process.
• Basic security. RedHat by default enables a lot of server capabilities that you may not be used to if you come from the Windows, Mac or OS/2 "desktop" world. I don't agree with this, as it makes it easy for a novice to leave huge holes into their system without realizing it. Luckily, RedHat also by default includes all the things you need to make your system far more intrusion-proof than the less-capable desktop OSes would allow.
• Sendmail configuration. A patch to include tcp_wrappers support, plus how to configure Sendmail to do things like automatically munge your address to appear to come directly from your account on XMission or allow other machines in your home to use your Linux box as an SMTP server.
• Setting up the fetchmail program to grab your mail from XMission's mail server and dump it into your mailbox on your Linux box, where it can be read using programs like Elm or Pine, or even Netscape.
• How to configure procmail on XMissions's machines to process your incoming e-mail, and tips on setting up your Linux box to take advantage of some of the things you can do with this.
• You can make your Linux box into a gateway to the Internet for other machines on a home network. This involves setting it up to forward IP traffic in a way that doesn't require you to have registered IP addresses for anything but the Linux box and that doesn't allow the outside world direct access to anything but the Linux box, plus some basic firewalling to protect the Linux box from outside access by unauthorized creeps.
• How to set up your own BIND DNS server. Covers a basic caching nameserver that can be used by anyone to reduce name lookup traffic over slow modem links, plus additions for people with static IP addresses and/or small home networks using private IP addresses.
• Secure shell. Give yourself an encrypted connection to XMission's shell machine, so nobody can snoop passwords, data or anything else off your session. Covers both the client programs and how to set up an SSH server on your own machine.

There are a few common network configurations that I'll be taking into account here:

1. Single machine using dial-up PPP and dynamic IP addresses. This would be a standard XMission dial-up customer. The big thing here is that your machine does not have a permanent hostname.
2. Single machine using a static IP address. DSL customers are covered by this, as well as dial-up customers who have paid the extra $5/month for a static IP address. The only real difference is that dial-up customers call their connection to XMission ppp0 ( typically ) while DSL customers call it eth0 ( also typically ).
3. Small home Ethernet, with a dial-up connection to XMission. In this case you need to assign private IP addresses to your machines. I would also strongly recommend that you get a static IP address, since it simplifies things and allows more security. In this case, the connection to XMission is usually ppp0 while the connection to the home network is usually eth0.

Howard Mann has another good Web site on how to install Linux and get it running. It's less XMission-specific than mine, and covers some things I don't.

If you want to comment on these pages, or report problems with them, e-mail me. Comments are welcome, but if you want to say "I don't like it" please expand on what you don't like and why.

Individuals may make copies of the original content here for personal use under "fair use" guidelines, and may give copies to other individuals for personal use, so long as a reference back to this site is included. Anything beyond fair use by individuals requires authorization from me first.