The Arda Network

Documents

Here, you will find documents illustrating the use of various software packages commonly found on a network. These documents are written as extended examples, describing the setup I use for my own home network. I’ve written them this way because I find examples surpassingly helpful when getting software to work and I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way.

One reason I wrote these documents is because, while I found truckloads of documentation on how to set up various pieces of software, I found few sources that showed what a working system might look like. In trying to write end-to-end documents I’ve been forced to leave out some information for the sake of focusing on other details. I’ve tried to do this in such a way that these documents don’t overlap too much with what other documentation is available, however.

With this in mind, you won’t find much in the way of feature lists of the various software packages that I employ. When I have had specific reasons for using particular software, however, I do include them. You will also find the contents of many configuration files that accurately reflect those which I’m using every day. If you understand why I’m using a particular package or have it configured a particular way, it will be easier for you to decide whether you should do something similar or try something completely different.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy reading about the fruits of my labours.

Arda Network Overview Doc ( July 21, 2007) - Provides an overview of the machines that make up the Arda Network and what they do. Includes a nifty network diagram.

DNS & DHCP Setup Doc ( July 06, 2006) - Describes how DNS and DHCP work on the Arda Network. My configuration includes a master and slave DNS server and TSIG secured zone transfers and DHCP updates.

Configuración de Arda.Homeunix.Net DNS & DHCP ( May 26, 2007) - The previous document translated into Spanish.

DNS Cache Setup Doc ( July 11, 2006) - Describes how to set up a DNS cache using, appropriately enough, dnscache from the djbdns package.

IP Addressing for CIDR Networks ( July 21, 2007) - Information on Classless Inter-Domain Routing networks. If you ever wanted an easy way to calculate subnet masks and broadcast addresses for a CIDR network, this is the page for you.

Mail Server Setup Doc ( August 04, 2007) - I’ve written a document that explains how mail is handled on the Arda Network. It describes my MTA, my IMAP server, how I deal with spam, and my webmail interface; in other words the whole nine yards.

NTP Setup Doc ( October 08, 2005) - Some of the servers I run work very closely together and things just seem to work more smoothly if all of them are using the same time. I use ntpd to synchronize the time on a local time server to public time servers in my area. The rest of my machines then use this local time server to synchronize their clocks. This document describes how I did it.

SpamAssassin Setup Doc ( November 12, 2006) - Here is a document that describes how I use SpamAssassin to help keep spam out of my users’ inboxes. In it, I talk about spamd and spamc, SpamAssassin's Bayesian filter and using sa-learn to train it, and storing Bayesian filter and Auto-Whitelist information in an SQL database plus a whole lot more.

Stunnel Setup Doc ( May 14, 2006) - Some of the programs I use in connection with my mail server communicate user IDs and passwords across my network in plain text. This is a Bad Thing^TM. To address this problem, I’m using Stunnel to eliminate plain text passwords from my network. This document describes how it works.

TMDA & Mailing Lists HOWTO ( October 08, 2005) - This is a document describing how to interact with mailing lists if you are using TMDA. It describes ezmlm, Mailman, and Majordomo lists. If you use TMDA and have any pointers to add, feel free to drop me a note.