On Oct 27, 2006, at 3:54 PM, <paul [ dot ] sadler [ at ] sdc-dsc [ dot ] gc [ dot ] ca>
<paul [ dot ] sadler [ at ] sdc-dsc [ dot ] gc [ dot ] ca> wrote:
...and I can't meet the November meeting, but wanted to ask three
questions before then. First, I should introduce myself -- "Hi, my
name is Paul, and I'll be your interrogator for the next few
minutes". My background is almost all M$ although I've done a bit
of UNIX, MAC, no LINUX. Good with software, less so with hardware,
programming experience is old (Basic, advanced basic, fortran,
cobol, dos stuff). Once programmed a menu shell program in basic
and dos, but only thing recent is ASP pages. Now here's the
nightmare scenario -- that's my background, and I'm going to run a
Linux server for my personal low-traffic website. Likely scenario
for configuration at home is:
- External router dividing into website server and a second
"internal" router
- Internal router connecting second "test server" and fileserver,
with two other PCs and a laptop
Sounds overly complicated for a beginner. Start with one box with two
NICs: The external IP would host your public website, the internal
would host your 'test server' , with a firewall between.
You can always add the second router setup later.
Website will need database functionality to generate dynamic pages,
e-mail capabilities for my domain addresses, and hosting my photo
albums. No e-commerce elements expected, ever. Internal "test site"
is essentially to allow me to make modifications to my website and
see the changes live, without copying them over to another server
first nor opening my internal server up to outside attack...and for
fun, I'll use it as a file server for my home network.
Standard LAMP - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) -
setup plus Samba - pretty well works out of the box with most Linux
distributions.
So on to the interrogation:
A) Anybody see any reasons why I shouldn't do this on a Linux
server (rather than Windoze, where I'm more comfortable but worried
about security and software costs)?
No
B) If I paid someone to configure my servers, perhaps using Debian
(?), for the server hosting, database reading, e-mail installation,
what would be an appropriate fee to a relative amateur? i.e. not
paying a professional company to do it...
Dunno. If you have all the pieces in place and know what you want, it
can probably be up and running in a matter of hours (or less).
C) Taking into account I'm a newbie to Linux, albeit a literate and
cocky one, how difficult do you think it will be for me to do the
configuration myself?
With a little advance reading and research, plus the willingness to
learn you could do this yourself in an evening or three. Of course,
once you start down that road it will never end...
Welcome any and all views! :)
Start slow and set up one piece at a time. First step would be
install Linux and play with it for a while before you even try to set
up a public server and routing and such.
Poly, a soon-to-be Linux server owner
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