This section lists packages that are related to networking. It has been split into several subsections for easier browsing.
This section lists packages that provide basic network administrative functions.
Contains the files needed for allowing anonymous ftp access to your machine. This lets any user get files from your machine without having an account, which is a popular way of making programs available on the Internet.
This is a collection of the basic tools necessary for setting up networking on a Linux machine. It includes ifconfig, route, netstat, rarp, and some other minor tools.
This package contains client programs that interact with NFS servers. It is not needed to mount NFS volumes. At the moment the only program in it is showmount, which can be used to show exported and mounted filesystems.
With this package you can monitor and filter incoming requests for the SYSTAT, FINGER, FTP, TELNET, RLOGIN, RSH, EXEC, TFTP, TALK, and other network services.
This section lists packages that provide various network-related daemons. Daemons are programs that are run automatically to perform various system functions.
amd is the Berkeley automount daemon. It has the ability to automatically mount filesystems of all types, including NFS filesystems, CD-ROM's, and local drives, and unmount them when they are not being used any more.
The default setup allows you to 'cd /net/[hostname]' and get a list of directories exported from that host.
Apache is a full featured web server that is freely available, and also happens to be the most widely used.
autofs is a daemon which automatically mounts filesystems when you use them, and unmounts them later when you are not using them. This can include network filesystems, CD-ROMs, floppies, and so forth.
Includes the named name server, which is used to define host name to IP address translations (and vice versa). It can be used on workstations as a caching name server, but is generally only needed on one machine for an entire network.
This is a server for the bootp protocol; which allows network administrators to setup networking information for clients via an /etc/bootptab on a server so that the clients can automatically get their networking information. While this server includes rudimentary DHCP support as well, we suggest using the dhcpd package if you need DHCP support, as it is much more complete.
Cleanfeed is an automatic filter for INN that removes spam from incoming newsfeeds.
This is a derivative of the original Carnegie Mellon University Simple Network Management Protocol. It is useful for managing networks and doing accounting.
This is the second release of the dhcp package from the Internet Software Consortium. It provides a server and a relay agent.
DHCP allows hosts on a TCP/IP network to request and be assigned IP address, and also to discover information about the network to which they are attached. BOOTP provides similar functionality, with certain restrictions. This server also answers those requests. This version is still considered BETA software.
GateD is a routing daemon that handles multiple routing protocols and replaces routed and egpup. GateD currently handles the RIP, BGP, EGP, HELLO, and OSPF routing protocols. The gated process can be configured to perform all routing protocols or any subset of them. It is curently maintained by Merit.
IMAP is a server for the POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP mail protocols. The POP protocol allows a "post office" machine to collect mail for users and have that mail downloaded to the user's local machine for reading. The IMAP protocol provides the functionality of POP, and allows a user to read mail on a remote machine without moving it to his local mailbox.
INN is a news server, which can be set up to handle USENET news, as well as private "newsfeeds". There is a *LOT* of information about setting up INN in /usr/doc -- read it.
intimed is a server that will tell networked machines what time it currently has. It is useful for keeping networks of machines in sync with the proper time.
MARS is a NetWare compatible file and printer server. It lets you use a Linux machine as a file and print server for NetWare based clients using NetWare's native IPX protocol suite.
The NFS and mount daemons are used to create an NFS server which can export filesystems to other machines. This package is not needed to mount NFS filesystems -- that functionality is already in the Linux kernel.
The portmapper manages RPC connections, which are used by protocols such as NFS and NIS. The portmap server must be running on machines which act as servers for protocols which make use of the RPC mechanism. This portmapper supports hosts.allow,deny type access control.
This is the daemon and documentation for PPP support. It requires a kernel greater than 2.0 which is built with PPP support. The default Red Hat kernels include PPP support as a module.
Sendmail is a Mail Transport Agent, which is the program that moves mail from one machine to another. Sendmail implements a general internetwork mail routing facility, featuring aliasing and forwarding, automatic routing to network gateways, and flexible configuration.
If you need the ability to send and receive mail via the internet you'll need sendmail.
The NOVM version of the squid will use less memory to do the proxy job, at the expense of file descriptors. (NOVM stands for NO Virtual Memory). If you are tight on memory on your proxy/cache server, this might be for you.
Squid is a high-performance proxy caching server for web clients, supporting FTP, gopher, and HTTP data objects. Unlike traditional caching software, Squid handles all requests in a single, non-blocking, I/O-driven process.
Squid keeps meta data and especially hot objects cached in RAM, caches DNS lookups, supports non-blocking DNS lookups, and implements negative caching of failed requests.
Squid supports SSL, extensive access controls, and full request logging. By using the lightweight Internet Cache Protocol, Squid caches can be arranged in a hierarchy or mesh for additional bandwidth savings.
Squid consists of a main server program squid, a Domain Name System lookup program dnsserver, a program for retrieving FTP data ftpget, and some management and client tools. When squid starts up, it spawns a configurable number of dnsserver processes, each of which can perform a single, blocking Domain Name System (DNS) lookup. This reduces the amount of time the cache waits for DNS lookups.
Squid is derived from the ARPA-funded Harvest project.
wu-ftpd is the daemon (background) program which serves FTP files to ftp clients. It is useful if you wish to exchange programs between computers without running a network filesystem such as NFS, or if you with to run an anonymous FTP site (in which case, you will want to install the anonftp package).
ypserv is an implementation of the standard NIS/YP networking protocol. It allows network-wide distribution of hostname, username, and other information databases. This is the NIS server, and is not needed on NIS clients.
This section lists packages related to Usenet news.
The inews program is used by some news readers to post news. It does some consistency checking and header reformatting, and forwards the article on to the news server specified in inn.conf.
This section lists packages that provide handy utilities related to networking.
Collection of utilities for querying name servers and looking up hosts. These tools let you determine the IP addresses for given host names, and find information about registered domains and network addresses.
bootpc is the bootp client for Linux that will allow a linux machine to retrieve it's networking information from a server via the network. It sends out a general broadcast asking for the information which is returned.
These are the development libraries and header files for CMU SNMP. This will allow the network administrator to write programs for use with network management.
These are the various utilities for use with CMU SNMP. Contains utils such as snmpwalk, snmptest, and more.
Comanche stands for COnfiguration MANager for
apaCHE. It is a front end for the Apache Configuration Server Project
Apache is the most popular, fast, reliable Web server on the internet. You
can find more about Apache at www.apache.org
This package is working with RCS to provide you with accurate history of the changes for the apache config files.
dip is a program to allow for automatic scripting of modem dialing. It's useful for setting up PPP and SLIP connections, but isn't required for either. It is used by netcfg for setting up SLIP connections.
This is the ``whois'' program. It will allow you to find out information on people stored in the whois databases around the world.
This package includes utilities necessary for configuring and debugging IPX interfaces and networks under Linux. IPX is the low-level protocol used by NetWare to transfer data.
This package contains an intelligent getty for allowing logins over a serial line (such as through a modem). It allows automatic callback and includes fax support (though mgetty-sendfax needs to be installed to make full use of it's fax support).
This package includes support for FAX Class 2 modems to send and receive faxes. It also includes simple FAX queueing support.
This package includes support for some modems which have voice mail extensions.
This package contains tools to help configure and use the ncpfs filesysten, which is a linux filesystem which understands the NCP protocol. This protocol is used by Novell NetWare clients use to talk to NetWare servers.
rdate is a program that can retrieve the time from another machine on your network. If run as root, it will also set your local time to that of the machine you queried. It is not super accurate; get xntpd if you are really worried about milliseconds.
Rdist is a program to maintain identical copies of files over multiple hosts. It preserves the owner, group, mode, and mtime of files if possible and can update programs that are executing.
Traceroute prints the route packets take across a TCP/IP. The names (or IP numbers if names are not available) of the machines which are routing packets from the machine traceroute is running on to the destination machine are printed, along with the time is took to receive a packet acknowledgement from that machine. This tool can be very helpfull in diagnosing networking problems.
This implementation of NIS for linux is based on the YP stuff for FreeBSD. It is a special port for glibc 2.x and libc >= 5.4.21.
This implementation only provides NIS _clients_. You must already have a NIS server running somewhere. You can find one for linux on http://www-vt.uni-paderborn.de/&ktilde;ukuk/linux/nis.html. Please read the NIS-HOWTO, too.
The biff client and comsat server are an antiquated method of asynchronous mail notification. Although they are still supported, most users use their shells MAIL variable (or mail under csh variants) to check for mail, or a dedicated application such as xbiff or xmailbox.
Some (notably Sun's) network boot loaders rely on special boot server code on the server, in addition to rarp and tftp servers. This server is compatible with the SunOS bootparam clients and servers.
Finger is a simple protocol which allows users to find information about users on other machines. This package includes a standard finger client and server. The server runs from /etc/inetd.conf, which must be modified to disable finger requests.
This provides the standard Unix command-line ftp client. ftp is the standard Internet file transfer protocol, which is extremely popular for both file archives and file transfers between individuals.
This package provides the ping and inetd programs, which are both used for basic networking.
This package provides a client and daemon for the Internet talk protocol, which allows one-on-one chatting between users on different systems.
identd is a program that implements the RFC1413 identification server. identd operates by looking up specific TCP/IP connections and returning the user name of the process owning the connection.
A number of protocols are available for automatic updating of TCP/IP routing tables. RIP is the simplest of those, and this package includes a daemon which broadcasts RIP routing notification and handles incoming RIP packets.
Rsh, rlogin, and rcp are a suite of programs which allow users to run commands on remote machines, login into other machines, and copy files between machines. All of these commands use rhosts style authentication. This package includes the client and servers needed for all of these services, as well as a server for rexec, which is an alternate method of executing remote commands. All of these servers are run from inetd and configured through /etc/inetd.conf and PAM. The rexecd server is disabled by default, but the rest are enabled.
The rusers server and client, both included in this package, allow users to find out what users are logged into various machines on the local network.
The rwall client sends a message to an rwall daemon running on a remote machine, which relays the message to all of the users on the remote machine. The rwall daemon is run from /etc/inetd.conf, and is disabled by default on Red Hat systems.
The rwho program displays what users are logged into all of machines on the local network which are running the rwho daemon. Both the rwho client and daemon are provided in this package.
Samba provides an SMB server which can be used to provide network services to SMB (sometimes called "Lan Manager") clients, including various versions of MS Windows, OS/2, and other Linux machines. Samba also provides some SMB clients, which complement the built-in SMB filesystem in Linux.
Samba uses NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) protocols and does NOT need NetBEUI (Microsoft Raw NetBIOS frame) protocol.
Telnet is a popular protocol for remote logins across the Internet. This package provides a command line telnet client as well as a telnet daemon which allows remote logins into the machine it is running on. The telnet daemon is enabled by default, and may be disabled by editing /etc/inetd.conf.
The trivial file transfer protocol (tftp) is normally used only for booting diskless workstations. It provides very little security, and should not be enabled unless it is needed. The tftp server is run from /etc/inetd.conf, and is disabled by default on Red Hat systems.
This timed server allows remote machines to query the time-of-day of the machine the server is running on. This allows for simple time syncronization across a network.
This is a daemon which runs on NIS/YP clients and binds them to a NIS domain. It must be running for systems based on glibc to behave as NIS clients.
ytalk is an extension of the standard Internet 'talk' protocol that allows more than two users per conversation, redirection of program output to others, as well as an easy-to-use menu of commands. It uses the same talk daemon as the standard talk program.