Can anyone tell me about RH Professional Workstation? I'd like to build a Samba server for a small business. I'd like to have an "official" RedHat product rather than a Fedora product since this will be a production file server.

I've looked at SuSE/Novell but all my previous experience is with RH 8 and 9.

I'd like to verify that you can use Professional Workstation as a Samba server. I've heard that some features have been removed in an effort to steer businesses toward the Enterprise product line.

If you don't need the actual support that your paying for, look into using CentOS or the like.. its basically Redhat with different logo's, etc. They actually take the Redhat src rpm's, rebuild them, package them together for you.

Samba ships with Professional Workstation, however it IS missing most of the following:

amanda-server, arptables_jf, bind, caching-nameserver, dhcp, freeradius, inews, inn, krb5-server, netdump-server, openldap-servers, pxe, quagga, radvd, rarpd, redhat-config-bind, redhat-config-netboot, tftp-server, tux, vsftpd, ypserv

So, you don't get an ftp server with Professional Workstation, nor do you get the packages to set up a DNS server or LDAP server.

If you need any of the above then look into buying Red Hat Enterprise ES.

Thanks for the info hkb33. In this small office environment I really don't need DNS or DHCP. I just need a simple file share where we can store files and backup to tape or DVD. Sound like I would be okay.

How about licensing? With RH9 you could buy a copy and install as many times as you like. Is this new version strictly limited to one install?

You can install it on as many computers as you like, however, you can only register one system with Red Hat Network and download updates for it. The subscription is on a per-system basis.

I have owned Professional Workstation since it first came out about 15 months ago.

Yes, you certainly can use Pro Workstation as a Samba server. Technically, this product is identical to Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS. The only difference is the support you get from Red Hat. All the packages that are in WS are in Pro Workstation.

Some server packages were removed in WS/ProWorkstation but Samba is definitely in there. The removed packages are amanda-server, arptables_jf, caching-nameserver, dhcp, freeradius, inews, inn, krb5-server, netdump-server, openldap-servers, pxe, quagga, radvd, rarpd, redhat-config-bind, redhat-config-netboot, tftp-server, tux, vsftpd, and ypserv. bind is officially on the list of removed packages but it is in RHN channel. You can certainly install other packages on top of Pro Workstation if you want - I go to Dag's archive for additional stuff.