Installation:
I tested E-Smith on the following machine: - An Intel Pentium 233mhz, 64 meg RAM, 6.4 gb Hard Disk, a Realtek RTL8139a Network Card.
Booted from the CD into the Redhat based installation.
You can choose to install E-Smith on either a single hard disk or on two hard disks with a RAID setup. The installation then partitions you hard disk, installs the packages and prompts you to make a boot disk.
The installation then requires you to reboot.
Configuration:
There are then prompts to set the ‘root’ password and configure networking. You may then choose whether you want to run E-Smith as a Server and Gateway, Server Only or Server Only with no Internet access. You are then prompted to configure your Modem, Internet access and ISP details and set up your dialup profiles for the dial-on-demand access. You can set the idle timeout on the connecting for different times or tell E-Smith not to dial, e.g. Peak Hours, Off-Peak hours and weekends.
You are then asked if you wish to set up a dynamic DNS account with a list of providers.
The installation now asks if you wish to offer DHCP and Proxy (Squid) services on your local network and if you wish to send status reports to E-Smith.
There is then an option of enabling Hard Disk optimisations for your machine (for relatively new hardware).
Your configuration is now activated.
You are now presented with the Control Console that can be used for (re)configuring your system and giving status information.
E-Smith provides a web-based administration interface on port 980 (but it doesn’t tell you that). Through the web interface you can configure E-Smith’s many features, which include:
* Time Zone and Time Synchronisation (you can use ntp.demon.co.uk for this),
Samba (Windows networking) Server,
LDAP Server,
Virtual Hosts,
E-Mail (POP3 and SMTP using qmail),
Web Based E-Mail (over HTTP or HTTPS),
User Accounts/Groups,
Server Backup,
Reinstallation disk creation,
Basic web design interface.
Conclusion:
These MANY features make E-Smith one of the most usable and configurable systems currently available for small to mid-sized business users. I found E-Smith great to use and configure but there was a lack of guidance at times (but I did only have the evaluation version = no manual). I would definitely recommend E-Smith to anyone who wants a complete office (or even home network) solution.
Thanks to E-Smith for providing the evaluation CD for test purposes.