It's been a very long week. I've spent nearly every waking moment working on new Linux servers. Being predominently a Windows guy, I'm rather pleased at the success so far, painful as it might come.
This week I moved one system from Slackware to Debian, and let me tell you all, there is no comparison between the OSes. Debian is so much easier to use that it truly saves a ton of time. Installing apps is quick and easy. And reconfiguring the kernel to handle multiple processors and large amounts of RAM isn't so hard eiher. If you need to rebuild a kernel then be sure to try the "make menuconfigure" or "make xconfigure" commands. Doing that presents a simple menu that lets you navigate all the possible configuration switches for the kernel, so you don't need to build a mile-long command line to get it right the first time.
The fun part of moving to another OS was setting the system up to be more secure. Part of that process required the use of iptables. If you haven't tried Firehol then check it out, it simplifies the configuration of iptables, which you might know can be a very complex configuration to deal with.
The server move isn't over yet. There's still a lot of work to do, but at least it's up and running. Nevertheless I am in for a long weekend of work. I'm not complaining though, this work is really fun :-)
