What I Hope To Accomplish

I've got a lot of plans in my head, and things will most surely change as I go. Think of this as the first draft of a plan.

I received a pile of parts to build a new client machine for myself (I'll list these later). All I need to pickup is a case and a hard drive.

I want to take my existing client machine and make it the new server. It is a Compaq with a 350Mhz Pentium processor. (I know! I know! It's probably too slow, but I already have it. You'll see this "cheapskate" theme throughout this ordeal.) It's got a 7 GB "Bigfoot" hard drive, but I plan to add a 160GB drive before I begin. I've loaded Mandrake on this before, and it runs OK.

On this new server, I plan to run Samba for file services. Other than that, I'm still thinking. It would be nice to consolidate services by migrating the IMAP stuff over. I'll have to learn how to do that. I certainly don't want to setup a webserver that is available to the outside world, but it could be fun for my son to play with. I'm not sure about having him play on my 'production' machine. I may setup the freed IMAP machine for him. I have a little time to think about things.

Since I'll need the Compaq machine to start the server project, I'll building the new client first. The Linux Server Diary will serve as the Windows Client Diary in the short term.

As always, please leave your suggestions and constructive criticism in the comments.