"Have you got an old 486 lying around somewhere?" That's a question I've asked on a number of occasions when offering to set up an inexpensive Internet gateway, mail server and firewall solution. Sometimes, the server also serves up web pages. . . .
"Have you got an old 486 lying around somewhere?" That's a question I've asked on a number of occasions when offering to set up an inexpensive Internet gateway, mail server and firewall solution. Sometimes, the server also serves up web pages. Linux is nothing if not flexible. Aside from being an entirely feasible approach, the final product based on this question never failed to impress the companies for whom I created such a system.

Of course, somewhere in there, I had to install the system, configure sendmail, diald, firewall rules, configure the hardware, the network, the web server, the ... well, you get the idea. When I heard about e-smith, it sounded like a dream come true. A server of this type was one trouble-free installation away. No messy configurations and a simple point-and-click interface for administration. What could be better?

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