Server Setup Help

[Guest electronic_cowboy]

Hello everyone, first I would like to say that I am a noob to Linux (so excuse my ignorance). But I would like to set up my desktop as a web/ftp server and have it securely done, as well as have a blog on there as well. If anyone can give me some starting points, tips and tricks. It will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time, Cheers

[pindakoe]

Setting up servers safely will require more understanding of Linux than the entry level you indicate to be at. On the other hand, one learns best by doing. One starting point for basic installations is here. The major shortcoming of that text is that it doesnt spend time on how to secure your services on that system. You can use the Mandriva Control Center for some of the configuration details, but at some time you will need to dive into how stuff really works. I have learnd mostly from these 3 sources:

1. Manual pages (man command)
   
2. Reading configuration files for package somewhere in /etc/name-of-server
   
3. Google
   

In terms of software: everybody will have his/her own preferences for webserving, ftp etc. I use boa (a small webserver), but Apache has no doubt many more options (also to shoot yourself in the foot). I have used Proftp in the past (before replacing Ftp by samba for my local net file sharing needs), but again there are several other options with Mandriva.

 

The only other advise I can give is to start small, i.e. one service at the time. Get that working fully before installing the next one.

Edited June 16, 2007 by pindakoe

[Guest electronic_cowboy]

thanks for your help

[adamw]

There are some tools in Mandriva to help you with this. Set up your repositories - http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tas...tions_available - and install the 'drakwizard' package. Then run drakwizard and use the web server configuration tool. This should get the web server working to the point where you can browse to:

 

http://localhost

 

and see a screen that says 'it works!'

 

making your site accessible from other people's computers, especially via a domain name and not just an IP address, is more complex - do you know anything about this already?

 

For running a blog, you can use Wordpress, which is also packaged for Mandriva. Install the 'wordpress' package. You will still have to follow some steps of the Wordpress installation process - you'll have to create the MySQL database and user, and edit wp-config.php to point it to the MySQL stuff, and maybe a couple of other changes. Then you should be able to use it via http://localhost/wordpress .

 

As pinda said, running a web server is pretty much inherently a tricky thing to do. It's especially hard to run a webserver on a desktop machine and keep it secure. You may want to consider running the webserver on a separate machine, if you have one, or as a virtual machine via VirtualBox or VMware if you don't. I run my webserver (http://www.happyassassin.net/ ) on 2007 Spring as a VMware virtual machine on a dedicated server machine which also runs my mailserver in a separate VM. If all you really want to do is run a blog, it's honestly easier to use an external hosting site, really.

Edited June 16, 2007 by adamw