request for some server config advice (warning - kinda long)

[volvoguy]

Howdy folks!

I still haven't converted my little home server over to Ubuntu, and
with a surgery date coming up soon, near failing hardware and a rarely
updated Slack 9.0 install, I'd kinda like to get something more
reliable working before I go under the knife.

I've been donated a "real" server recently that I've mostly just been
goofing around with - tried my first software RAID array, played with
the Hula Project stuff, and just used the regular desktop install the
first time around. This time I want to do it "right" with the server
install and get it configured to squeeze every ounce of performance
out of the hardware that I can. I'll start with the basics first.
Here's what I have:

Micron Netframe 2101 server
Dual P3 550Mhz processors
512Mb RAM (maybe a bit more, I've done some scavenging since. :)
Two 9Gb SCSI hard drives (IBM DNES-309170W)
Cirrus Logic GD 5480 PCI video card (no prob. only use monitor for
troubleshooting)

This part of the system will be just for the OS and 4 users home
directories and email accounts (this is all being done on a single 6Gb
drive on the Slack machine now, so I'm not too worried about space).
One thing I'm a bit confused about is how and why some people slice up
their disks into seperate partitions (ie. one each for /var /tmp /home
/boot etc, etc). Then you throw RAID and LVM into the mix and I have
no idea which is supposed to perform better. I've been experimenting
with yet another machine I have lying around that seems to perform
great:

/dev/hda1 + /dev/hdb1 = 20Gb RAID1 /dev/md0 mounted as /
/dev/hda2 + /dev/hdb2 =  1Gb RAID0 /dev/md1 for swap

I used LILO instead of GRUB because of the RAID stuff, which I didn't
think apt-get would update when new kernels came around, but
apparently it does (yay!).

So now, considering that setup, here's what the machine will be doing:

- email server (probably postfix, IMAP, spamassassin, razor - I'll be
migrating from sendmail. top priority)
- Samba fileserver (second priority)
- squid proxy
- webserver (apache/php/mysql - very low traffic. mostly for testing)
- DNS server
- possibly antivirus for scanning incoming email

Not counting the Samba server, are there any benefits to
partitioning/installing differently than I mentioned above? I'd guess
that LVM would just add overhead that I don't need, but because of
frequent lightning storms and power outages, I'd really like to do
RAID1. Am I correct in assuming that swap doesn't need to be redundant
and that RAID0 would work (if not, where would it go in this setup?).

Whew. Almost done. See why I didn't take this one to IRC? :o)

Samba fileserving will be in two parts (lotsa storage). I have two
120Gb IDE drives already set up as a software RAID1 array and I'm
keeping that dedicated to (my own) music. The rest of the serving will
be to the rest of the family, and I pretty much want to do the same
thing, but I'm keeping an eye out for sales on a pair of SATA drives
and a PCI controller card. This will either be one big RAID1 array or
4 equal sized arrays so each family member can have their own.

Any suggestions/opinions/comments would be appreciated. You can take
it off-list if you wish. Hopefully I'll get a few answers here and
fill in the gaps on IRC while I'm actually putting this beast
together. :o) Too bad Breezy's release and my surgery were only a few
weeks apart. I know list traffic is already on the high side right now
as it is.

Thanks all!!

--
Aaron

Ubuntu SVG Artwork - http://www.volvoguy.net/ubuntu
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