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.