Spam Free Email

I’ve been working with the LFS software for about a week now and even though I think it is a superior direction I’m currently thinking of using FreeBSD instead.

Each time I try to get LFS it take me 5 to 9 hours to get to the point where I can test it, which is turning out to be once a day. I’m going to keep working on getting it right, but till them I’m going to setup my test system using FreeBSD. I’m currently downloading the version 5.4 ISO images and I hope to have my test computer up and running this evening.

I’ll keep working on the LFS system with one of my slower system, which take 9 hours to get to the failure point. So I expect that progress there will be quite slow ….

[tag]Linux From Scratch, LFS, FreeBSD[/tag]

Alright, even with ALFS my system is taking 5+ hours to create each time I compile it. I’m still working through the (lack of) documentation, but I still think this is the best route to go so far.

While I’m waiting for the rebuild, which I get 1 or 2 a day right now. I’m working on my ALFS and thinking of how I want to use the beyond LFS as well. I know that the BLFS profiles are going to be of great help for Apache and a few other packages that I’m going to need, but I will most likely have to create a few of my own profiles of things like CLisp.

I’ve also been putting some more though into the email meta data, a little into what I want to have in it and a bit on the structure. I’m not sure if I mentioned that I want it to end up in XML, but I do, and even though I always intend to keep the original MIME email messages (I’ll need them to pass to other systems) the anti-spam system that I am creating will use the XML meta data internally.

I’ve been working with Linux from scratch for a few days now and I’m still impressed.

Today, after getting quite bored unpacking and compiling software, I decided to look at the automatic LFS profiles.

The LFS LiveCD has a profile on it setup to compile all the packages, just like the instructions say and I’m even more impressed now then I was when I was doing everything by hand.

With just a few changes in a few scripts you can setup a PC to build a LFS system and since the configuration files are all XML based, you can get the automatic Linux from scratch software to install just about anything else as well.

I can not imagine how one person could create a few scripts and make their own LFS LiveCD and be able to build any type of system that they wanted. Sure it may take a few hours or over night to get the results you want, no where near as fast a installing from a standard distribution, but from what I can see it will be more then worth it.

In fact you could create a a single LFS LiveCD with multiple profiles and be able to recreate an entire server room in a day or two. I’m impressed and I’m going to be basing my servers off of this technology. Anytime I need to add capacity I will be able to boot off of a CD and run a few script, then I will have a server configured to my specifications and I’ll be able to support more servers by myself than ever before

First thing I am going to need for this process as a whole is a development environment. I am choosing Linux as the platform for the entire project and I will be using open source packages where ever I can, which would be most of them.

Many times I will be rewriting software and jumping through hoops that may not seem to be necessary, but the long term plan I have is to have a fully integrated system, which I do believe will require recreating the wheel (again) a few times.

I found a project called Linux from scratch that I am going to try to use for the base Linux systems that I need. My biggest problem with most Linux distributions has always been that they are over blown and take up more resources then they need to in order to accomplish the simple tasks that I want my servers for.

When I want a web server all I really need on it is Apache and a few extras to connect to the database server. When I want a database server I want MySql and not much more on the system, so the idea of Linux from scratch is exactly what I have been looking for for longer then I can imagine

So I’m off to build my LFS development environment …