=M> As i have mentioned before on the list, i'm planning to
=M> move our club bbs to linux/fbb. However there seems to be
=M> some problems in convincing the other sysops in the club,
=M> that we have to use linux. Mostly it's stability questions
=M> that they asks. They don't wan't to run to the bbs site
=M> every day to reset the system..
I don't know your regulatory and technical limitations, but you could always
set up the machine at your house or some other convenient place for a month or
so and test its reliability experimentally before moving it to the BBS site.
Linux has a software watchdog that can be loaded, usually as a kernel module,
that will try to restart the system if control is lost. You can also buy (or
build) a simple hardware watchdog for which there is also kernel support, and
this works by resetting the machine if the operating system misses checking in
with the hardware watchdog for a sufficient length of time.
The source for the software watchdog is in /usr/src/linux/drivers/softdog.c,
and the source for the hardware watchdog is in /usr/src/linux/drivers/wdt.c.
The wdt.c driver is intended to support the WDT50x cards from Industrial
Computer Source ("http://www.indcompsrc.com/products/data/html/wdt500-p.html")
which cost about US$135-205. Alan Cox (who reads this list) wrote up a short
summary ("http://wpcweb.wilpaterson.edu/home/webster/watchdog.txt", mirrored at
"http://ftp.kiae.su/linux/slackware/docs/linux-2.0.30/watchdog.txt") about the
Linux watchdog options and their capabilities.
=M> I'm planing to use Redhat 4.2 and kernel 2.0.30 patched
=M> with ax-modules-2.14 and axutils.2.1.42 (i think), and of
=M> course xfbb as a daemon.
There are many others here who are more qualified to comment on particular
combinations of software and versions, especially Terry Dawson, so I will leave
this to them.
=M> I also want to start the following
=M> services : Samba, WWW (Appache), SMTP, and news (INN).
=M> Everything is installed from the RedHat 4.2 (Biltmore).
=M> Could there be any problems with this setup? It must run on
=M> a 486dx-something (minimum 66Mhz), we don't have the
=M> computer yet. And also, how much ram should
=M> we put in to the thing.
You will need at least 16 MB to get this machine operating properly, with at
least 32 MB swap space. The 486DX-66 is adequate for general operation, but
can make certain kinds of maintenance (such as recompiling the kernel)
uncomfortably time consuming. The innd process can require a great deal of
memory depending upon what you ask of it, perhaps on the order of 64-128 MB RAM
if you load it heavily.
-- Mike