Where to begin...

C

Canadian in Berlin

Gawd
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
697
I'm so much of a linux noob, that I don't even know where to begin on Google for this question. Its not something I'm planning to attempt just yet, but I want to start gathering information on it. So that I have a goal to work towards with my linux Knowledge.

At some point in the near future, I want to dig out a slightly older machine we have, put in a harddrive(or 2) and set it up as a webserver for my wife's photos. In order to do this I know I'll first need some sort of webserver, likely Apache? How hard is that to setup?

Once I'm hosting "hello world", I then want some software to make the page easy to maintain/update (with new photos). Is there an easy program that does this, or would I be looking at a more complicated CMS?

Afterwards I'll probably want to setup an FTP server. Will I also need my own DNS Server, or does that depend?

I guess my questions boil down to:
1. Is there a Distro that can do this really easily? Does it matter? I've had both Ubuntu and FreeBSD recommended to me for home usage...
2. What is the easiest way to get this setup so my wife can easily have her photos online, without me having to hop in and tinker every week?
3. Just what have I gotten myself into (aka, how suicidal will I be while trying to get this done?)


Anyway, a few tips to get me rolling forward, then hopefully I'll just keep cruising and not ride straight into the garbage cans. :D
 
Hey,

There are several tutorials on www.howtoforge.com that will help you out. I know there is one concerning photo galleries, so you might want to poke around there first. You'll probably spend hours just going through the tutorials that it offers, so prepare to have some time handy :)

Here is a guide specifically for setting up Ubuntu Server (http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_server_ubuntu7.10). You may want to hold off though because Ubuntu Hardy will be released tomorrow. If history holds, another guide will be released tomorrow, but I'm sure the guide will largely be the same.

All you will be interested in is installing Apache/PHP/MySQL, and perhaps DNS, although it might be easier to let another company manage the DNS for you (say: http://www.everydns.net).

Answers:

1) I'm personally a Ubuntu user... so I'm a bit biased towards Ubuntu. But I honestly think that Canonical did a great job making it easy to setup a basic LAMP setup and maintain updates easily. FreeBSD is also a great choice. Whatever distro you choose, there is probably a tutorial for it on Howto-Forge :).

2) Hard to say for sure. I think Gallery2 (if memory serves me correctly) lets you upload through a web page like most online photo galleries.

3) Nah, not suicidal at all. Just prepare to face the somewhat large learning curve for Linux :)

Hope this gets you started :)
 
Yeah, thats more than I was looking for (not complaining). Thank you VERY much. :) I was torn between Ubuntu and FreeBSD. FreeBSD would be nice because I already have Ubuntu running on my wife's computer (still ironing out issues there), but Ubuntu would be great because its very user friendly. :)

And yeah, the Linux Learning curve is what scares me, i could probably do this in a day (or less) in windows, but I want to learn to use Linux and such. Plus its l33ter, or whatever cool people say nowadays ;).

Again, thank you thank you thank you. I'll have a nice german beer in your name tonight. :)
 
linux newbie::: freebsdwiki.net
server newbie:: lighttpd.net (/usr/ports/www/lighttpd/ AFAIK if you use FreeBSD)
ftp server newbie:: maybe found on unix-tutorials.com
....................................
those links should answer your questions more than I could... I have
no experience in actually running a web/ftp server from scratch
as of yet.
......................................
I would consider those easier than Linux, though the initial learning
curve is longer. not that I *really* know, tried one linux live cd once.
....................................
sorry about the somewhat redundant 9:01 answer that ignored your 9:00 post, which
appeared as I was typing...
 
Hi,
I'm confused what you mean that you would like FreeBSD because you're running Ubuntu on your wife's computer? I mean, if you're already running Ubuntu on your wife's machine, you can easily install Apache on it and so forth. Maybe you were looking to keep this on its own machine?

The only difference between the Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop is that the server install is a lot leaner (no GUI), but both uses the same packages.

Yes, you could use other web server software like lighthtpd or nginx, but there are tons of tutorials and documentation for Apache which will definitely help you out as a n00b :-P.

Personally, I would stay away from FTP and use SCP instead. SCP is autotmically enabled when you setup SSH.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
 
Yeah, I want it to be on a seperate computer, the idea being the server is always on and hidden away somewhere (preferably not where we sleep).

The reason I'd say I'd prefer FreeBSD is simply that then I can learn a different Distro. Variety!!! That said, maybe I'll do it the first go around in Ubuntu and then do it again in FreeBSD (nothing says I can't do it!! :D)

edit: oops, and whats the advantage of SCP over FTP?
 
FreeBSD is great, especially its networking. I'd recommend it far over ubuntu or any linux for server grade applications. Learn ports and you're golden.

SCP is secure. FTP is not. Internally, it makes little difference (who's gonna steal your password? your wife? :)), but over the internet, don't use FTP as it sends your password cleartext over the wire. Having said that, I much prefer FTP over SCP due to the amount of applications out there that just do ftp..
 
I also tried learning FreeBSD and Linux at the same time and got frustrated. They're very similar and yet different enough that I was banging my head all the time to remember that the commands aren't necessarily the same in both. So I'm cannot really recommend trying both at the same time, but maybe you can keep track of the changes between the two?

FreeBSD's ports is indeed awesome... I love the Handbook for it too - very thorough and the examples are pretty helpful.

I believe FTP sends text in plaintext, while SCP send files using the SSH tunnel, thus your files will be encrypted during transmission. This is important if you uploading configuration that contains user/passwords, but may not matter so much in a home network.

Plus, like I said before, SCP is really easy to admin (I think) compared to FTP. With FTP, you have to install a seperate server, learn the configs (which gets daunting), and so forth. While with SCP, it's just an extension as if you're working on the computer locally, so not much (if any) config is needed.
 
dreamnid said:
Plus, like I said before, SCP is really easy to admin (I think) compared to FTP. With FTP, you have to install a seperate server, learn the configs (which gets daunting), and so forth. While with SCP, it's just an extension as if you're working on the computer locally, so not much (if any) config is needed.
Click to expand...

Go install vsftpd. Super easy to config and run. But.. yeah, it is one more thing to config, but ftp is very nice when dealing with clients in windows who won't or can't understand scp/sftp.
 
Ah, the FTP is so I can send Videos from concerts to friends or the other way around. With windows, so i gues its going to be FTP anyway.
 
Ah, not quite true.

Just install WinSCP which is a graphical SCP utility for Windows.

Or if you want to be a geek, there is PuttySCP (not sure if that's the exact name) which is command-line utility. I'm assuming it's like the linux version.
 
I personally would recommend this setup for ease of usage and management;
Ubuntu Server + Apache + MySQL + Coppermine Photo Gallery.

You can easily use the XP publishing wizard portion of Coppermine to directly publish entire collections of files to different categories straight from XP 'Web Publishing Wizard' - works like a charm. http://coppermine-gallery.net/demo/cpg14x/docs/index.htm#xp

 
For everyone who offered advice and links in this thread (so all of you), if you guys ever come to berlin I'll buy you a beer and show you some nice pubs. Thanks for the advice, links and tips, I think I'm off to the races (plus on some of those sites I found other really useful guides).
 
Hey, no problem.

Not sure I'll be in Berlin (Berlin!!! -- Eurotrip) anytime soon, but do have a beer on me :).

Hope everything works out for ya.
 
Well, work and other things have delayed this project, however now that I have oodles of Overtime this project can finally get a go-ahead...

Hardware platform will be:
http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/BAREBONE_SERVERS.html

I'll manually upgrade to 2GB of RAM later on, plenty of examples of people running a ubuntu server on this platform. I'll be running this as a fileserver with a raid array (RAID 10) over 4 drives and the 5th drive will be a backup for critical files.

Total power consuption with 5 WD Green drives is around 60W, so thats not bad for a server thats going ot be on all the time.

I'll update this thread as the project goes along, and my previous offer of beer still stands. :)
 
Well... the basics are up and running, despite having no internet connection due to changing providers (go german customer service). Configured the server over christmas at the in-laws house....

Should have an internet connection soon, once I get DNS running and read some security guides I'll post a link. :)
 
I've got Gentoo running on my home server. Setting up Apache+php is easy as typing "emerge apache php"
I have mine sitting in a closet with no monitor hooked up to it. Thing I like about Gentoo is that for almost everything you don't have to have X installed, so less overhead/space.
Yes, Gentoo is a little more manual to setup, but I think it's worth it, and the install doc's have come a long way.
As for FTP, I've got pureFTP going, you can even have a web based user interface setup to add new users.
 
Server is up and running now.
Web: Apache + PHP + MySQL, Photo page being served via Gallery
FTP: Pure-ftpd, I installed Pure Admin to give me some GUI configuration here

Cause I'm a sissy windows user I'm running XFCE for a desktop on it, (also handy for things like Jdownloader which is GUI based). Gnome is currently installed but I don't run any sessions on it anymore.
Remote Access is via SSH and an NX Server.

I noticed many brute force attacks in the logs and have setup psad and fail2ban to protect the server. (monitoring ftp, ssh and apache logs as well as a few other linux logs).

I've setup conky and eterm and discovered the coolness of "screen" as well. Running samba for my windows machine and NFS for the girlfriends linux box.

Learned a lot about various aspects such as setting up a software RAID10 array, mounting files for chrooted users on the FTP (mount --bind), LVM, sym links and hardlinks and other aspects of the linux filesystem.


oh, and I installed putty on my work cellphone so I can access my server from anywhere via ssh... nerd power or so.
 
Hah, sounds like you're well set then. :)

(And screen is awesome, indeed. One of my favourite small tools.)
 
now that its up and running its kinda fun to screw around with it and try and tweak/improve stuff... its only frustrating getting stuff up and running.
 
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