2009/9/17 <[email protected]>: > > That's exactly what I want, but a *virtual* server, so I can play with > it (almost) as if it were a separate machine, and because I want to > set up more services later (such as SSH) and don't want to make major > changes to my system. > --Aidan
So there is the answer to your own question? You can use virtualisation to create an 'appliance' that you can test/drop/burn/whatever. Apologies if I am covering old ground for you - but some good terms to use: - a 'host' is the parent physical server so to speak within/upon which virtual machines run - a 'guest' is the virtual machine/server that runs within/upon a 'host' Running a guest OS (go read up about Xen or VMWare or OpenVZ or QEMU and KVM) lets you build up a server within a well defined and contained space on host. Although I usually install from scratch, I believe you can dowload pre-built instances of virtual servers that are built for specific tasks - appliances as such. A quick search revealed this article that you may like to read before embarking further? http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/138166 -Abhinav
