[PLUG] linux web server setup

[Daniel Logghe]

First, in the future when you start a new topic could you send a new 
message instead of just replying to a message. For those of us using 
threaded views of our email this message is buried in a thread about dsl 
routers.

Josh Yaganeh wrote:
>     Hi everyone, I am in the process of trying to set up a webserver for 
> me and some friends to use. I currently have K12LTSP linux installed 
> (The distro used at my school) with apache (with perl, php, mysql, 
> etc...), ftpd, and with no gui. I'm fairly comfortable in the terminal, 
> and with editing config files. So far i have gotten apache to host users 
> public_html folders and have started to try and get virtualhosts set up 
> for several domain names. I'd like to give each user a private and 
> public ftp account so they can upload files for personal storage and 
> also host small files for friends to access. If anyone can help me get 
> this set up or provide me with hints/suggestions/nudges in the right 
> direction, I'd be most grateful. In addition, would anyone be kind 
> enough to tell me if there is a more suitable linux distribution or if 
> there are any front-end gui programs to configure apache and ftpd?

Yes, any of the more mainstream general purpose distros will likely 
serve your purposes quite well and be a more pleasant system to work 
with for learning purposes. I recommend Debian, but Fedora, Mandrake, 
Slackware, and SuSE are all good options. K12LTSP is an excellent distro 
for it's purposes, but is pretty specialized. Since K12LTSP is Redhat 
based you might be most comfortable with Fedora, or possibly Mandrake.

As for gui configuration programs, there are a few options out there. 
Check out webmin, it's a web based frontend for configuring a number of 
things, including Apache.

As for ftp, don't. Unless you have a really pressing need to use ftp 
there are better options. FTP is horribly insecure, it's also generally 
slower than HTTP. Learn all about SSH and the things you can do with it 
including scp and sftp. And for serving files to the general public do 
it through Apache.