Greetings Sorry to have been so quiet recently, I know my off topic ramblings will have been missed. :-)
Just to finalise on an old thread here, I had so much hassle trying to configure my server with Win2K + Apache 2, I decided to go for the debian testing release, text only, plus Apache 2, following advice from Steve and backed up by Trevor. This was done by using the net install method, which went very well. I could never have imagined doing anything like this a few months ago. So thanks to all who have helped me over the period. I fell foul of a few newbie pitfalls like copying html files over from the Windows setup with filenames like "Fred Bloggs.htm" which could neither be read as web pages via the new system or re-named, deleted or anything else as Linux sees this as 2 files "Fred.htm and Bloggs.htm" so I am still stuck with these on the system at the moment. Luckily, the fact that Linux differentiates between upper and lower case filenames I was able to recopy the files over doing "mv" with a rename as the final argument to "fredbloggs.html" and get the file in place, in a useful naming format. This then loaded correctly as a web page from a LAN machine. Any tips on how to get rid of the rogue files would be appreciated. The installation worked great on some very primitive hardware and I have attached the details for anyone who may be interested. It may be of interest to another newbie considering a similar project. Woodsey
I have had a couple of bargains on Trade Me and one was a Hewlett Packard P133, with 4Gb hard drive for $5, I know these things run like a Swiss watch from past experience. I loaded it up with RAM I had kicking around and ran it for 24 hours with a hardware inspection program running to investigate reliability. Downloading the rc2 installer was simple and easy to make the boot, root, netdrivers and cd drivers diskettes. Having no CD on the server I did a net install via a floppy boot. The installer configured DHCP to pick up and iP address from my router but this failed. I then chose manually, an IP address which fell within the DHCP range of the router to try and force it to connect. This seemed to work. The installer diskette offers to let you insert a USB device very early on, and that's useful. Got on to the NZ mirror, got the message "Mirror does not have a valid release file on it, try a different mirror" I was warned about this on the list a few days previously. Went to the Australian mirror and got to the debian 'sarge' installer. This went very smoothly, with the default partitioning arrangement accepted. The installer asks very early in the process if it should install a USB device, which is very useful if you think about it. After a problem free install, a re-boot was necessary and root and user passwords configured. The system was configured with a static IP address and a DMZ pinhole setup on the router to fire in that direction. Then the installation continued with an applications manager guiding the apps installation. I only chose 'web server' and the installation of Apache2 was a breeze. But there was a huge choice of other stuff. There was a bit of trial and error involved in setting up the virtual hosts for my 3 sites. The configuration of VHosts is a bit more convoluted than with the Windows version but it seems to work better in the end. So at the end of this 3 days of eyeball frazzle, I have this amazing debian server running solid as a rock, instead of a shaky, vulnerable Win 2K setup. When I started mailing this list, I was learning on a 486 + Tiny Linux. This was only partially successful and I laid it to rest but it gave me the confidence and enough experience to tackle this project. So thanks are offered to all members of the group who have helped me with 486+Tiny Linux, X-Stuff, Lappie+Ubuntu, Writing to FAT partition and all my other newbie stumblings. All this help came into good use during my project. Special thanks to Trevor for help with VHost configuration amongst other things. Woodsey
