New install stuck on "Waiting for network configuration..."

[nikkilocke]

I am trying to install Zentyal on an old Pentium class mini-ITX machine with 3 network ports, to use as a firewall/multi-WAN gateway, DHCP server and (low volume) web and mail server.
I went through the normal install, and chose a lot of Zentyal modules. As loading up the modules was taking a long time, I left it to get on with it. When I came back, the UI had timed out, so I logged in again. I did the initial configuration, but it took so long to save that it timed out again. When I logged back in again, it said there was nothing to save.
I have configured 2 of the network ports (the other one won't be used just yet). eth0 is the external port, getting address via DHCP, and eth2 is the internal port, set to a fixed IP address, and with the DHCP server running on it (supposedly).
I shut down the machine overnight, and came back to it today. Now, on boot, it shows the Zentyal logo, with "Waiting for network configuration..." underneath it.
If I ctrl-alt-F6, and login, both eth0 and eth2 show ip addresses, and I can ping stuff on eth0 (nothing is plugged in to eth2 yet).
The machine is obviously really busy, as logging in in text mode takes ages (over a minute!).
Is this likely to be something I have done wrong, or is the machine just not up to running Zentyal?

[ichat]

can you add some  loggs to your post, 

if anyone wantst to actually spend time helping your,  them having to ask for it and waiting for your pley is a pure waste of  thair (our) time..  thank you...

[robb]

It's not a solution but what happens if you just reboot the system? It might just be a (temp) hiccup. I remember I have seen a similar event with a Zentyal 3 VM. After the reboot all went fine and the system booted ok.

[nikkilocke]

Thanks for the help.

I have rebooted the system twice.

There are lots of logs in /var/log - which one(s) would be useful?

[christian]

syslog ?

[ichat]

that and all network related  stuff in var/log/zentyal

[nikkilocke]

Actually, I am now getting some messages on the console about the machine being out of memory. I had forgotten how much memory I had in the machine, but now I've checked, and it is only 1/2 Gb, and is not expandable above 1 GB. So looks Like Zentyal is too much for it :-(

So not much point in pursuing this. Sorry to waste your time.

[christian]

512MB is more than enough to run Internet and some gateway features like mail server but Zentyal, because of its design doesn't not really targets such "small" configuration.
Some other distros are designed for such purpose 

[nikkilocke]

Any suggestions for a good alternative distro?
I don't need a GUI on the machine itself (assuming there is a web GUI), as I'll be running it headless.
I need:

• Dual WAN with load balancing.
• Mail server (sending via external relay), IMAP (no need for webmail), ideally with virus check and spam eliminator.
• DNS server.
• DHCP server.
• Web server.
• SSH server.
• Open VPN server.

[robb]

I would suggest to stick with Zentyal 2.2 for your situation. Add 512MB of RAM so you have 1GB mem. But 512MB for a 'light' Zentyal server is enough.

I noticed that Zentyal 3.0 is more memory hungry and needs at least 1,5GB mem to work smoothly (tested in a VM)

Can you also doublecheck if / has enough space?

[christian]

Zentyal is, from my standpoint, definitely not (and less and less if you look at trend since eBox) the right distro for small (light ?) platforms.
Even if you can do it with 1GB (assuming you do not deploy too many modules and for sure not file sharing), you have to be very cautious with swap, especially on this kind of "slow" hardware with slow CPU and no memory upgrade capability.
Zentyal is an interesting and powerful platform but if your main criteria or rather constraint is platform hardware, then better look elsewhere or be sure to have swap on SSD unless you decide to fine tune Zentyal, removing GDM.
My V3.0 test platform (running on C7 VIA CPU with 1GB) does nothing but still consumes 600MB of memory... With no activity (I mean not clients), I can't prevent some swap. Load reaches very quickly peak above 3 just while applying updates.

[nikkilocke]

The disk is 300GB, and has nothing else on it, so I presume / will have enough space.

I have abandoned Zentyal for now, and installed Ubuntu server and Webmin, to see if that will do the job. It certainly uses a lot less memory without the unnecessary UI.

I have also ordered 1GB memory.

I'd still be grateful for any suggestions of a nice web UI to routing, firewall, mail server, DHCP server, etc. (I can probably manage Apache by hand, if necessary).

[christian]

why not using Nginx or Lighttpd or even Cherokee as web server. All are really lighter than Apache from resource requirement standpoint.

[nikkilocke]

Thanks, but there are plenty of resources to run Apache. There are not enough resources to run Zentyal, probably due to the huge overhead of X Windows and the other stuff needed to present the GUI on the machine.

I'm not looking for an alternative web server, but an alternative management GUI (via the web).

[robb]

I doubt the LXDE environment is consuming 'huge amounts' of resources. But if in doubt, start the server headless.

What 'other stuff' are you referring to?

But if you think you don't want to use Zentyal (why are you here if you don't want it?) you can settle for a vanilla Ubuntu server and install Webmin on it.