Nethserver(s) setup nearly finished here in Colombia

#1

Hi all!
Just finished to setup a series of Nethserver machines here in Bogotá to manage the needs of my business (a contemporary art gallery).
First of I’m not an IT pro - just a Linux and free software addict for a long long time (I began with installing Stampede and Slackware in the past century) - and I’m not a native English speaker, so sorry for the language and sometimes for the lack of terminology.
The needs I had :

  • Users management to discriminate the access to :
  • Shared folders (legal & finance stuff, system stuff, HR stuff, art stuff) including loads of pictures and videos from the exhibitions at the gallery.
  • I wanted an internal backup as well as an off-site backup for these shared folders.
  • My accountant needed an external access to my ERP (Odoo 10 CE) and I also wanted to self host a series of websites just for the fun of it.
  • Last bit : I wanted to get rid of that *&%/! modem/router our national ISP provides to us and use my own gateway/firewall/router.

Well after a long search and a lot of fails I’m now all setup with 4 Nethservers machines :

  • A big (for me) AD and file server running on a Dell T30 PowerEdge, which is my only new gear
  • another machine used to rsync the Dell (this one is a second-hand PC)
  • a small PC with running Nethserver with Odoo
  • a last Nethserver PC with 3 NIC for router/gateway/firewall/DHCP server

Inside my DMZ I set up a series of used PC/Debian and Raspberries/Raspbian to host my websites (which are not critical) and an Odoo instance synchronised with the main instance of the LAN for my beloved accountant to access.

The other machines on my LAN are Debian workstations SmartTVs connected to a big wired network or to a wifi hostspot hosted on a Raspberry Pi Zero :slight_smile:

I’m currently working on the VPN stuff to access my shared folders from the outside world but I’m not in a hurry for that.

That’s it!

So I’m quite happy to have been able to do all that thanks to the tutorials and posts I’ve found in this forum and just wanted to send you all a big thank you!

Thierry

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#2

Good to have you here Thierry, and great to see your effort on deploying NethServer. You know you have quite some neighbors in Venezuela that are longtime NethServer users? @apradoc and @jgjimenezs for instance…
If you have any questions, suggestions or anything else, just ask and we will try to help you out.

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#3

Thanks Robb - will get in touch con los vecinos.

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#4

Hi Thierry,

To begin with: nothing wrong with your english (kind of envy you because mine is worse) and congratulations with your achievements!

As my title reveals i like you set some Raspberry PI’s to do some work.
Did you stubble on some threads about nethserver on arm here?

If you find time and a RPI doing not much, It would really help to get some feedback on our effort from a linux (and arm) enthusiast like you.

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#5

Hi Mark,
Yep I had a look at this thread Testers needed nethserver-arm img and was going to give it a try - just received a couple more of those little bugs from China -
I have already downloaded an image but given I have no spare monitor with hdmi here I need to try a headless installation : not sure it can work…
Anyway I’ll join the thread as soon as I figure something.
Cheers.
Thierry

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#6

Nice setup!

Do you use a script? You may check out nethserver-hotsync.

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#7

I do use this one.
Works like a charm, out of the box.

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#8

Well, you’re not a PRO man but you have set up an amazing environment.
4 NethServer with different purposes? :hushed:

Happy to hear that. Any pic of your gallery? :slight_smile:

:heart_eyes:
Thanks to @Stll0 @alep @wbilger and other people here.

Looks like you learn a lot here. Would you like to help the community?
Did you find some errors or docs that you can easily fix?
Any newcomer to help?

#9

Hi Alessio,
Thanks for your feedback.

Why 4 ? Because I like to separate things -> I have this brand new real robust Dell server as a file server & AD server which is really the central feature (this one have have a 75 days uptime now and I had to stop it because I was moving for my new house). The data are copied (via a crontab task on my PC) each night to an old PC with NethServer and Odoo which happens to have very big disks, and the whole configuration and data are rsynced each 30 minutes (thanks to the hotsync script) to a very very old PC which has more or less the same disk capacity as the Dell server.
The gateway/firewall is also a very old PC with a small disk and a bunch of Ethernet cards.
I have and old cisco router ready just in case the Nethserver router burns or becomes mad.

You mean the art gallery? :smile: Not here to advertise that but you can find it through the Oracle under neebex.
If you mean of the setup I don’t want the engineers lurking this forum have a condescendent smile or a small stroke looking at them.
I prefer to send a picture of my favourite machine :slight_smile:
12938336_10209293644966800_5816802975406224185_n

I learned everything about NethServer and CentOS here (I’m more a Debian guy).

I guess I’ve tweaked a lot of the howtos I’ve used but globally they are good stuff and these tweaks were more due to the age of my machines and my specific needs and I doubt very much they can be useful. Should I can be of some help please make the call but I’m a lazy old guy. I can translate to French some howtos if useful. Or review the translations. My French is way better than my Spanish which is slightly better than my English.

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#10

TRS80 with the one and only Z80 ???

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#11

Yes Sir, a Thing Of Beauty.

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#12

It brings up nice memory’s, the first computer I have ever worked with on school.
… oops that makes me feel old…

Just for old time sake I have an z80 dev-board and got M$ basic running on it.
But you have a real Beauty!

2 Likes
#13

Ohhhh… I was in that other camp: Commodore (VIC20 and later C64)