Finally my (unmanaged dedicated) server has been deployed (under 48 hours). Now my actual work begins. I have never done Linux administration. It is a totally new experience for me. After some failed yum's and rpm -i's, I started reading. Internet is full of Linux documentation and Google is my friend and also the helpful Linux users worldwide (thanks).

I am starting to get a hang of it. Along the way I have started learning several interesting things like the rc.d system, initlevels and so on.

I think the server should be initially in initlevel 3 (text) mode. Frankly I don't wan't to secure x server related ports at this time.

BTW: init 0 and init 6 are really nice touches.

The default system had apache, sendmail, mysql etc. but they are not starting automatically. I need to configure them. Then comes firewall. I want to use an ISP configuration tool. I don't want to be an ISP. However I couldn't find anything simpler to configure DNS, firewall, domains, sub-domains etc.

Finally I will focus on hardening the server, installing all patches and then testing. Looks like I have a long weekend ahead of me but I am not complaining. It is kind of an adventure. I plan to write-up short how-to's after the experience.