B. Mann Consulting

First you'll need to download a current ISO image of the e-smith distribution. Check the list of mirrors for the best place to download it from. Once you have it burned to CD, we're ready to begin.

Put the CD in the drive. At this point, you should have removed any data you want off the hard drive you have installed -- it will be completely wiped by the e-smith install. You may have to go into your BIOS to ensure that the boot order has "Boot from CD" before the hard drive.

Reboot the machine and it should boot straight from the e-smith CD. You'll be greeted with a text-based GUI that will walk you through the install process. Make the appropriate selections for keyboard and language. Select the single hard drive, no RAID option. Type in "install" to actually start the install process. This part usually takes about 15 - 30 minutes on newer machines.

Once all the packages have been installed, you'll be walked through several screens of configuration to complete the basic setup.

System password

Use a secure password of 8 characters or more, mixing upper and lower case, as well as numbers and non-alphanumeric characters. This is the main password for the system. Memorize it, and write it down.

*Domain name

If you have a "real" domain name that you have registered, you could enter it or a subdomain here. You might want to read about using EasyDNS for this. If you don't have a domain name, put a fake domain, like workgroup.local. The .local part is important -- you can make up whatever name you want to go in front.

*Server name

Consider coming up with a naming scheme. My computers are all from Norse mythology -- odin, loki, etc.

Local Network Adapter

Two different drivers will be shown. Select the first one as the "local" network adapter.

Local IP Address

Make sure this is in the same subnet as the rest of your LAN. If you're going to be using the e-smith as a router, something like 192.168.0.1 would be appropriate. If there is another device performing routing functions, a high-numbered value like 192.168.0.100 might be better.

Server and Gateway Options

You'll either want Server-only (if you have only one NIC and a router is handling your broadband connection) or Server and Gateway (there are two NICs in the e-smith, and it's being used as your router).

Dedicated or Dial-up

For server and gateway mode, you'll be in dedicated mode.

External Interface

This is where you set up your broadband connection. Use PPPoE (DSL) or DHCP (cable) as appropriate.

Dynamic DNS settings

Keep this to off -- the current settings do not seem to work reliably.

DHCP Server

If you have a router, let it use DHCP. If the e-smith is doing the routing, turn this value to on. In the next sections, set the DHCP range to something like 192.168.0.25 and 192.168.0.50.

Other settings

Everything else can be kept at its default setting, unless you know it needs to be different.

*Note: changing these values after you've installed may cause problems. Make sure you're happy with them before finishing the configuration process.

After applying the configuration settings, the various settings will be applied and network services will start up. At this point, you should be able to access the server manager web site using the local IP address you set during the configuration process -- e.g. http://192.168.0.1/server-manager. If it doesn't seem like you can get access, try switching the network cables to make sure you have the local and external adapters set correctly.