Windependence Day!

After all my hardware issues this year I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, namely, my 12 year old PIII Windows 2003 server.

I have officially declared HinkyNet link local, so a local DNS domain name and server are no longer required.

Out goes the Windows DNS server. I've been running a PowerDNS slave server for over two years now and it handles everything that's not local well, thank you.

Since IPv6 is the future, there is little need for a DHCP server anymore. I've looked at DHCP6, but my impression is "fuck it". Too much hassle. And why bother when radvd works so well?

Plus, everything on the wire has a static address anyway, so the logical place to handle DHCP for IPv4 is the wireless access point. It's very limited and not a "full featured" DHCP server. All you can specify is a range and a DNS server, which is fine for all my wireless devices. And radvd takes care of IPv6 addresses for the wireless crap. One notable exception: the built-in Atheros NIC on my CentOS laptop can't get an IPv6 address. Plug in any supported USB wireless NIC and it works fine.

So, trash the Windows DHCP server. It's not needed.

Logon domain? More hassle. Gone. And I never used that Exchange much server anyway.

Print server? It's handled by Linux and advertised by multiDNS/avahi. Even Pinky's iPad can find it.

File server? meh. I have files on that box that are over 15 years old. If I need them, I'll turn the box on and get them, but after looking at what's there it's damn obvious I won't be turning it back on soon.

The proxy server is and has always been SQUID, but today I upgraded to SQUID 3.1.13 (from 3.1.11). It's dual stack so clients can attach by either IPv4 or IPv6. Clients that don't want a proxy can out directly over either stack.

That's it! Aside from one laptop and my "UT99 workstation" DinkNet is Windows free!