Hello, I'm bout to do a personal project for the first time and thats installing a Web/Email/ftp server using Debian Linux 'Etch' 4.0r4 and I need some help like a step by step guide on what applications to use, what and how much space each partition should use out of 40gigs. This will be Text based only since I would like to really get my feet wet in this setting, so if someone can please point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it. Oh yea and if there is anymore information you need please feel free to ask because I really want to get started before the weekend. Thanks

Since you're fairly new to this process, I'd recommend putting most of your data on a single ext3 filesystem. ext3 has proven itself to be extremely reliable, and a single partition will give you more flexibility with your disk usage than you would have if you split your data into more partitions. At this point, the best partition layout for you would be a 50 MB /boot, 1 GB swap, and the remaining space for your root partition. (By the way, I have a tutorial for installing Debian, if you're interested. Debian's installation manual might also interest you as well.)

The main server applications you want are apache (web), ftpd (ftp), and an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) of your choice. I recommend using sendmail or postfix. However, if you select the 'Server' software collection in the Debian installer, all of these -- as well as a lot more -- will be installed automatically.

Thanks John A for the info and I will look more into your tutorial for more insight. Also yes using the total partition of root should help me since I'm always running out of space whenever I do go by the split partition route. Hopefully this help me alot and I can stay working on Linux more than just leaving it alone after a few months.