On Tue, 2003-06-03 at 17:02, Jarrod Major wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Hey Gang,
> 
> I've decided to give a web server a go and I was hoping some of you could give 
> me your advice. Here's the pertinent information.
> 
> * initially a test box but could host a single domain with little activity
> * will be running Apache, PHP, PERL, PostGREs or MySQL, SSH

LAMP environments seem to be quite popular, so that may be a good reason
to go with MySQL.

> The hardware I have to choose from is a P90 with at least 48Mb RAM or a 
> PII-350 with at least 64MB SDRAM. Either configuration will have a 4.2Gb HD 
> (5400 RPM), floppy and CDROM. Not sure what I need for a NIC, will a 10 BaseT 
> suffice or should I put a 10/100 BaseT? It will reside on a 10/100 network.

I have a Pentium 1 running at around 133MHz with 64MB of RAM running as
an e-mail/ftp server. I haven't set it up as a web server but just to
give you an idea it works perfectly in it's current configuration, which
doesn't get very much traffic, but it was way under powered when I tried
to run a ut2003 server on it. If you plan on adding servers to the same
machine (ie. mail/DNS) then I would go with the PII just so you have
room to expand. As for the NIC you are never going to get more than
10MB/s out of your internet connection, but I'm not sure if a 10/100
card will allow you to better serve multiple requests or not.

> My biggest hurdle is trying to decide which distribution to go with. Obviously 
> if it is just a web server I won't need (or want) to run X. I'll want 
> something that can be patched and updated fairly easily. I don't think FTP is 
> necessary if I can SSH(or Fish) into it.

I like RedHat as a server myself, but if you have SuSE running on your
other machines than it may be a good idea to go with that. Either way
you cannot go wrong. With a 5GB HD you may also want to consider
installing X on it. On my server I run X with Windowmaker. I usually
only use it if my GF is using the main machine, then I ssh into the main
computer and run my X apps off that. It is also helpful if you want to
run some GUI configuration programs over ssh. You don't actually have to
boot into X, but if you have the X libraries on the server then it gives
you that option of running some X apps. I would still make sure the
server boots into runlevel 3, because you don't actually want to run X
most of the time.

> Thinking seriously about Gentoo (yes Trevor and Kevin are probably clapping) 
> but it is a little daunting. Security is important and this will be behind an 
> IPCop firewall on the Orange (DMZ) interface.

If it's sitting in a DMZ then you definitely want to make sure that
there is a firewall on there. Both SuSE and RedHat have easy to
configure firewall tools.

> I suspect having a few things like IDS and IPChains couldn't hurt.

Not at all.

Good luck,

Jesse
-- 
Jesse Kline, RHCT
http://www3.telus.net/public/klinej/resume.html

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Reply via email to