General Questions for getting started

[bruce1271]

Hi,

I have a few general questions If anyone could help me out.

I have basic Cable Modem service through ATT now for general surfing using DHCP. attached to the box is a small lan(2 PC's) and I am running IP MASQ and iptables. Everything works fine.Mandrake 8.0.

I would like to set-up my box to act as a server for my own web-site to the outside world.

For now, mostly my family will be accessing my site for pics and movies and stuff. Later more.

What do I need to do to get this up and going??
I know get a domain name and register it.
Is it possible to use my current connection?
I have to get a static IP through ATT right?
What is the normal cost of this kind of line/service and what is the industry "name" for this type of service from ATT?

As you can see, I have alot to learn and any help is appreciated..
thanks,

Bruce

[Homer J Simpson]

If you have to set it up with DCHP, then you don't have a static IP. (Or are you talking about your LAN?) If you have static or dynamic IP, you should check out http://www.dyndns.org They have a list of clients that will allow you to setup a host whether it is static or dynamic IP. They have many clients too..windows, linux...etc.
The clients and service are free, unless you want to use your own domain. Otherwise..you get whatever.dyndns.org as your site address.
Good Luck!

[posterboy]

I am doing this with AT&T and cable modem. There are many ways. Here's one. Register the domain you want. Point the DNS addy of that domain to someplace like granitecanyon.com (which see), and in a couple days, you are on the web. Apache will answer people surfing to that address. Now, the rest of the story. First, this violates MY terms of service with AT&T. Not that they care, I have been doing it for years, and they probe in here about once a month, and look around. Next, DHCP is not, by definition, any more than a lease on an IP address, with no way to prevent it changing. If that happens, you are down for a couple days, until the boxes at granitecanyon catch up. Here (Atlanta) AT&T has an 8 hour lease. Not good. I use a cron job to renew every hour, so if I have trouble, I have always got 7 hours minimum to hold onto my IP. From a practical standpoint, that works, I have had this IP many months. All this is far from ideal, but I handle my own mail in this way, too, (another TOS violation) and it certainly can be done. Good Luck, Ray

[Falcon]

If you want to you should register a dynamic DNS account at somewhere like dyndns.org then point the domain you register to that. Then you can just log on and update the dyndns.org address and you are on the net again.

[bruce1271]

Great News!!!

I went to dyndns.org and did what you all said. It works. EXCPET, I can only view the web page from my netscape in Linux. When I go to one of my PC's which I have masked behind my box, I cant view the web page??? Why is that?? Is it because it is masked or becuase It is not my netscape on my localhost machine?? :confused:

[Falcon]

There are two things I can think up off the top of my head. In the apache config file (on RedHat7.1 its /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) it needs to know the I.P. of the server. If it is set to 127.0.0.1 (local loopback) it will not work, you need to set it to your I.P.

The other thing I can think off is that you have a firewall blocking it. Make sure your firewall is allowing port 80 through and 443 through if you want SSL.

[bruce1271]

I have a dynamic IP so why would I set my .conf file to that?? I will change in a few days. BTW I have a script that updates it on dyndns.
Any other help is appreciated...Thanks

[Craig McPherson]

You only need to specify your IP in your Apache configuration file if you're doing virtual hosting -- ie hosting multiple websites with on web server. If that's the case, then your httpd.conf does have to have all your corrent IP(s) listed in it in order for the vhosts to work right.

I do vhosts, but I'm on a dynamic IP, so I have a script that sed's my httpd.conf whenever my IP changes to put the correct IP in it, then restart Apache.

EXCPET, I can only view the web page from my netscape in Linux. When I
go to one of my PC's which I have masked behind my box, I cant view the web page???

Maybe you don't have Apache set up to bind to your internal network interface? Maybe you have it listening only on your external interface?

[bruce1271]

Hey Craig,

I got it to work for internal and external(My firewall was blocking me). But, Whenver I do ~username, my www.blahblah.com (http://www.blahblah.com) turns into mylinuxhost.com/~username instead of www.blahblah.com/~username. (http://www.blahblah.com/~username.) How do I fix this? Also, if you dont mind, my server is only serving 7k/sec what could be causing this awfully slow upload?? I am runnign 64meg ram on a P166Mhz.

Craig, you are the most knowledgeable linux guy I know, every time I come across a reply from you I pay more attention...You Da man and keep teaching us newbie's!

Bruce

[Craig McPherson]

Thanks for the propz. I'm leet, but I'm humble.

As for the name change -- set your ServerName directive in Apache. Set it to www.blahblahblah.com, (http://www.blahblahblah.com,) then whenever Apache needs to construct a self-referential URL< it'll use www.blahblahblah.com (http://www.blahblahblah.com) as the base of it.

As for your server speed: the first thing I'd do is try to isolate the problem. Set up an FTP server on the box if there isn't already one, and have other computers download some giant files from it to benchmark the speed. If FTP seems fine, try having Apache serve some really large files and benchmark those as well.

Normally Apache performance tuning involves adjusting the spareservers stuff, but if throughput is your only problem, that shouldn't have anything to do with it. Apache's TCP/IP settings might have something to do with it, but do some benchmarking with other services to find out if the problem is with Apache or with the system itself.

[bruce1271]

This servername Directive...it is in the commonhttpd.conf file? If so, I dont see one set at all. What is the syntax?? I have one set for a virtualhost on my lan PC, but none other that says ServerName= ..

My Lan PC's pull files off Apache at ~ 1Meg/sec. I guess that tells me my server is ok?? Or does the lan work different then the WWW when pages are served, other than the obvious direct connection. I cnat believe my Cable modem uploads is 10k/sec, I called them today and they said it should be 300k uploads!! I didnt tell them I was serving... Myabe I should complain and say I try to ftp somewhere and it doesnt work very fast?? Any thoughts?

[bruce1271]

And what the Heck is KAPM-Idled running as a process?? It is running at 80% CPU all day???
Process number 3 I cant kill it whatever it is and when I reboot it is still there.

[Craig McPherson]

Idled is 2.4's new idle-CPU thread.

It runs at the lowest possible priority and consumes any CPU time that isn't used by other processes. During the CPU time it takes, it causes the CPU to execute a HLT instruction, which makes it do nothing.

This results in your processor being 4-20 degrees cooler during normal system load and using a bit less electricity.

However, Linux has ALWAYS done this, it's just never shown up as a distinct process before, and it only does in 2.4 if that option is specifically compiled into the kernel. If you DON'T compile the new idle-thread into the kernel, then the kernel idles like normal, so I have no idea what the new idle-thread has over the old way of doing things.

[hux]

hi,
I'm doing almost exactly the same thing...I'm planning on using
http://www.zonedit.com

worth having a look.