I am currently in an unix sys admin class. For the most part we have to set up as many things as we can think of. I have 4 computers to work with. Currently I am workin on DHCP,Firewall/router, DNS, Terminal Server, Database server, Apache server, maybe something with samba. Any other ideas someone may have???

VNC? SSH X-forwarding? I'm a samba fan. Maybe Apache with ability to handle php, asp, and coldfusion? (gonna need some porting from windows to do that stuff!) Print server w/ cups?

Is that the only thing you'll be graded on? How many things you set up? What you can do is apply the Rube GoldBerg methodology. Rube, if you didn't know, had a knack for designing complicated diagrams for tasks that could've been done simpler.

For your project you could send a message from one computer, lets say the first computer, to the forth. Within each computer, you can install a whole bunch of servers (http, application, database, file, etc.) and pass the message between all of them. For example, one time I set up ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, Perl, C++, Python, JSP on the same machine. They were all connected to Apache's HTTPd server. When the user submitted an HTML form, it went to ColdFusion, processed the information, passed it to PHP, PHP processed it, passed it to ASP, then to Perl, then to a C++ program, etc., etc., finally landing to a database. You can make it more interesting though by having it go through firewalls, encrypting it, making an XML file out of it, going through proxies, different operating systems, servers, cron jobs, etc. The fun never ends!

Whoa. Damn, it's been a long time since I've posted.

Wargames unix box.
My friend has one and it seems to be working quite well and VERY fun.

Just write up some scripts for levels and ask people to join your wargames server and see how far they can go. very intense