BSD is supposed to be more stable, but slackware's stability has never
seriously been questioned. I would stay away from the more recent
versions until more all bugfixes are in. My advice is use kernel 2.4.22
on Slack 9.1.

A webserver will have holes in it, and it is really the scripts that run
it, the server programs that provide security not so much the distro.
This is the key, that variable in scripts do not allow overloading, so
that root access can be had.
A webserver has to run more or less without much firewall protection,
or port forwarded though a firewall. It may take a good book on
firewalls to get this well figured out. IP Chains might be as good
as tables, so Linux Firewalls by New Riders is comprehensive.

Most free distros are about equal in many respects. Slack provides
kernel support as do other Linux distros for setting up packet filtering
and the like in the kernel compile. BSD has some scripts that are
supposed to make firewalls easier to do, but I doubt that is really
true. I think that setting recompiling your kernel with
a careful read of IP packet options would be de-rigeur. There should be
enough docs in /usr/src/linux and the make menuconfig process to allow
you to figure out what you especially need. I think you would find
kernel recompiling in Slack more basic and trustworthy than the Hat.
It is more part of their meat it would seem. I would look at both
make config AND make menuconfig. The latter is more for overview and
the former for getting it right. For some reason I have found that make
menuconfig leaves out choices that pop out at you in the textual
config.

Slack (net) scripting in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 and rc.inet2 is fairly easy
and straightforward compared to RedHat and other sysv types. They have
a fairly workable tool, netconfig, for easy simple network setup.

It would appear that the consensus would be that Squid is the server to
run in a semi-commercial environment. Apache would not be a bad choice
here however. Apache docs take some reading.

I would say a week would be enough time, depending on where you are at
now. You should be able to do it from the on disk linux docs but
visiting the Apache website will probably be in order. They are nicely
explanatory.

EC<:-}

Madhusudan Singh wrote:

> Hi
>
> I am working on setting up a web server with plone (content management). I
> have a fair bit (6-7 years) of Linux user and part-time admin experience,
> but want to do a good job (a very secure setup which can handle denial of
> service, etc. kind of attacks) for this latest project of mine.
>
> I am also interested in learning about the system I setup, so availability
> of good documentation and sizeable, helpful Usenet communities (like the
> good folks at comp.os.linux.misc, etc.) would be a big plus. I do not want
> too steep a learning curve, as I need to get the first version of the
> webpage up in a week or so.
>
> Thanks.