Episode 56 - Home Servers Part 2: The Apache Web Server

[Chess]

In this episode: VTC course on Ubuntu Linux; an overview of the Apache Web Server (additional documentation here, here, and here); audio and email listener feedback.

http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-56-home-servers-part-2-the-apache-web-server/

[Claudio]

In this episode: VTC course on Ubuntu Linux; an overview of the Apache Web Server (additional documentation here, here, and here); audio and email listener feedback.

http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-56-home-servers-part-2-the-apache-web-server/

Thanks Chess for another great episode.  I was curious about Lighttpd (still curious on why it's pronounced "lighty" ) and I might give it a try on my Slackware box.  Currently our family homepage is running on a vintage Mac Quadra 650 using MacHTTP, but I was thinking of creating another site strictly for my personal interests and it looks like it would be a good chance to try this out.  While I have used Apache in the past, I'm wondering if it might be overkill for what I want to host and maybe Lighttpd might do the job.

Speaking of Macs , what kind of Mac does your wife have?  Is it running OS X, and if so which version?  I've always been the kind to recommend OS X on any Mac that can run it, even if it means adding some more RAM to it (OS X loves more RAM).  Usually 10.3 or greater is what I recommend and this site has some great prices on OS X.

But if you really want her to be using Linux, then why not Linux on the Mac?  Yes, I know the story about Ubuntu and how they've moved the PowerPC version to an "unofficial" status, but you might even notice that Linux tends to give new life to older Macs that might suffer a bit under OS X, just like older PCs that have a hard time running XP.  the installation isn't that much different than the PC version, except that you are asked to create a bootstrap partition for the kernel to reside in and that your bootloader is yaboot.  I've installed Ubuntu a good number of times on some G3 iMacs and some G4 Macintoshes and they've installed just fine.  About the only issue I had with the G3 iMacs was that I had to disable DRI in xorg.conf (something that you might want to do before rebooting the Mac after the installation finishes).

Incidentally, my iMac G5 has Kubuntu 6.10 installed and aside from the hard-on/off fan issue, it runs pretty fast.  It even supported the hardware acceleration for the built-in ATI Radeon 9600 video.  It definitely feels faster under Linux than it does in OS X.  Wonder how much difference it would be if I used Beryl...

Thanks again!

-Claudio

[dovad]

I'm hoping that Chess will read and respond to this but also anyone else who has checked out any of the BSD OS's.  I'm shortly going to setup a server at home to serve files over my LAN as well as an Intranet and perhaps a few other services.  We (my wife and I) have a smattering of everything.  She is a Windoze XP user and I have a MacBook but we also have an old laptop which I just installed PC-BSD on as well as an old desktop that I have Fedora Core 4 on for the purpose of learning Linux.  Our router/firewall is running IPCop.  I am however pretty new to using Linux or PC-BSD.  I've become fond of the way FreeBSD is managed vs Linux for it's core of developers making decisions as to the management of the kernel and OS programs as opposed to the "benevolent dictator" that Linis Torvalds seems to be.  I am also considering Debian for the stability that I've read about as well as it's devotion to a free distro without any commercial interests.

My big question is: how difficult is FreeBSD to work with as opposed to some of the Linux distros?  Chess mentioned that in some of the BSD's much software has to be compiled from source.  Being a newbie to the workings of Linux or UNIX am I biting off a lot to chew if I go with FreeBSD as opposed to perhaps "an easier to get up and running Linux distro"?  I've ordered a book on FreeBSD but would appreciate any input while I wait for the UPS man.

Thanks...
Dave

[Chess]

Dave,

I have used primarily FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but I would say that setting up and managing a BSD box is a bit more work than setting up and managing a Linux box.  Not by a huge margin, necessarily, but maybe I have not been using them long enough for a fair comparison. 

As to compiling, the BSD's do have precompiled binary applications, but for the most part, you do end up compling a fair amount of software yourself through the ports system.  With a certain release, say FreeBSD 6.2, you will have binaries of the base system and some of the ports, but if the ports get updated, say GNOME or KDE gets updated and you want the latest and greatest, then you need to compile using the ports system.  It's not hard compiling software in the ports tree -- you simply go to the directory of the software you want to install and type "make install clean."  It downloads the source, patches if necessary, and does the compiling and installation.  Very easy, but can be time consuming depending on what is being built.  The ports system works pretty well most of the time, but in the short time that I've used it there has been some breakage here and there, although some of that was my fault. 

I would recommend reading the FreeBSD Handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

A helpful tutorial type site for OpenBSD is this:

http://www.openbsd101.com

I am using FreeBSD as a file and print server to test out its long term ease of management.  I am comparing it to another file/print server I manage that runs Debian Sarge.  So far, the FreeBSD box been great and it's serving files with Samba and acting as a print server with CUPS with no problems at all.  My other linux boxes and our Mac connect and get files and print without issue. 

This is an old PIII system and it definitely runs quicker with less overhead than the comparable Debian box I have.  I have compared memory usage, processes, and other types of things and on these systems, the FreeBSD box is doing extremely well.  I seem to get far less dropped Samba connections and overall it just seems more stable, which is saying a lot since I am comparing it to Debian Sarge, which is solid as a rock, IMHO.  I can definitely see how FreeBSD is used on high end servers.

In the end, I would definitely suggest you try them out.  That's the only real way you can know for sure.  I must say, Debian's apt-get is really, really hard to beat.  I might end up sticking with Debian for my file/print server, but we'll have to see.  I just think it's so cool we have all these Free (and free) world-class operating systems to use and play with.

[dovad]

Chess,

Wow, you know things!  My primary goal for this server will be for the most part a file server albeit a critical one.  My wife and I plan on getting a Fujitsu Snapscan scanner which comes with Adobe Acrobat and is capable of creating PDF's that are searchable.  Many years of personal papers will be painstakingly scanned and saved as well as our digital photo's and eventually scans of many years of family photo's. 

The box is a 4 year old P4 2.4 gig with 1-gig of memory.  I picked up a 3ware RAID card and 2 new SATA 320 Gig drives to mirror and build this box.  I just want the best OS in terms of stability and reliability.  It will live behind our firewall and not be accessible outside our LAN.  Basically it will need to run SAMBA from day one.  As an additional project I'd like to setup Apache and host an Intranet site for my wife and I to store a database of personal data and be easily accessible.  It would be best if I could also setup this computer to require a digital certificate for both access to files as well as the Intranet.  A bit over my head at the moment but great goals I think.

Thanks for all the great pointers!  I'll download the handbook  and checkout the "openBSD101" primer.  In a few days I'm leaving on a multitude of business trips (pretty much most of April) so will have lots to read in the evenings at my hotels.

Thanks for all your time!

Best...
Dave

[Claudio]

BTW, i just realized that I never provided the link to the site that sells the OS X discs.  I've already added it to my previous post if you're still interested.

[dovad]

Chess,

Just a quick question if I may.  If I want to install a package from the ports to a BSD installation and see the following:

cups-pdf-2.4.5
    A virtual printer for CUPS to produce PDF files
    Long description | Package | Sources | Main Web Site
    Maintained by: simon@olofsson.de
    Requires: cups-base-1.2.10, expat-2.0.0_1, fontconfig-2.4.2,1, freetype2-2.2.1_1, gettext-0.16.1, ghostscript-gpl-8.56_2, gnutls-1.6.1_2, gsfonts-8.11_2, jpeg-6b_4, libdrm-2.0.2, libgcrypt-1.2.4_1, libgpg-error-1.4_1, libiconv-1.9.2_2, perl-5.8.8, pkg-config-0.21, png-1.2.14, tiff-3.8.2_1, xorg-libraries-6.9.0_1

Should I gather from this if I need to install the CUPS PDF virtual printer I will have to first install all the listed packages before I wrap-up with the actual cups-pdf-2.4.5?

Thanks...
Dave

[Chess]

Should I gather from this if I need to install the CUPS PDF virtual printer I will have to first install all the listed packages before I wrap-up with the actual cups-pdf-2.4.5?

Yes, but the good news is that FreeBSD figures out all the dependencies for you, so you don't need to manually install them all.  I would actually start by installing cups itself (cups-base) and then add the cups-pdf if it does not pull it in automatically.

There are some tweaks you will need to do to get CUPS working.  Be sure to read the messages that are displayed when you install the ports.  You can capture the output to a log by first running "script -a log.txt" (I think that is right -- may need to read the man page for script) prior to running the port installations.  When done installing, do control-C to exit the script.  You can then view the contents of log.txt and read the various messages that tell you what to do.

I would definitely encourage you to use the bsdforums.org to post problems.  It's a pretty active community there.

Good luck!

[Dragonfire]

This is one Great Easter Bunny Gift guy's.
These Videos are great I surely will enjoy these videos.
Many thanks to the time and effort Chess gives us.
A great giver of knowledge thank you.

Dragonfire

[arbulus]

@claudio

I wish I were able to find accerated drivers for the nVidia card in my iMac.  It's a G5 1.6 Ghz with 512 MB RAM.  I have Ubuntu dual booted with OS X.  That's really great that you were able to find the drivers for your ATI card, because everywhere I've looked, I always find that people say PowerPC machines aren't able to use accelerated drivers under Linux because nVidia and ATI haven't, nor will they, release any drivers or hardware specs.

[Claudio]

@claudio

I wish I were able to find accerated drivers for the nVidia card in my iMac.  It's a G5 1.6 Ghz with 512 MB RAM.  I have Ubuntu dual booted with OS X.  That's really great that you were able to find the drivers for your ATI card, because everywhere I've looked, I always find that people say PowerPC machines aren't able to use accelerated drivers under Linux because nVidia and ATI haven't, nor will they, release any drivers or hardware specs.

Actually, the only drivers I'm using are the open source drivers since that's all that's available.  Mind you, while the 9600 is supported for hardware acceleration on both x86 and PPC, the 9600XT which is in my Sapphire Tech video card on the Slackware PC (which had Ubuntu 6.10 before that) didn't have the support.  Go figure.

As for the NVIDIA chipsets, I'm not quite sure if they finally have any 3D acceleration support yet.  If it's the Power Macintosh that you have, then you might be able to replace the video card with a supported ATI card.

[jza]

My big question is: how difficult is FreeBSD to work with as opposed to some of the Linux distros?  Chess mentioned that in some of the BSD's much software has to be compiled from source.  Being a newbie to the workings of Linux or UNIX am I biting off a lot to chew if I go with FreeBSD as opposed to perhaps "an easier to get up and running Linux distro"?  I've ordered a book on FreeBSD but would appreciate any input while I wait for the UPS man.

Thanks...
Dave

Hi dave I will recomend to use qemu or a virtualization software so you can encapsulate the installation process.

[jza]

The box is a 4 year old P4 2.4 gig with 1-gig of memory.  I picked up a 3ware RAID card and 2 new SATA 320 Gig drives to mirror and build this box.  I just want the best OS in terms of stability and reliability.  It will live behind our firewall and not be accessible outside our LAN.  Basically it will need to run SAMBA from day one.  As an additional project I'd like to setup Apache and host an Intranet site for my wife and I to store a database of personal data and be easily accessible.  It would be best if I could also setup this computer to require a digital certificate for both access to files as well as the Intranet.  A bit over my head at the moment but great goals I think.

Wow that's a bit of an overkill, compare it with my micro server that only has 128 onboard memroy and a Flash card of 2GB of storage. My device runs puppy linux and a cutt down version of XAMPP (no perl or mysql internationalization support or docs).

However this lil machine is great, consumes minimum of power, doesnt have moving parts and is able to run phpMyAdmin, phpWebAlbum, Wikimedia, and a small project manager web application and a testing copy of my forums and other web apps I cassually try.

This is on my private network but is stored on my bookshelf, makes no noise.

[Chess]

@jza:  what is that nifty little box?  Link? 

[Claudio]

It looks like some sort of mini-ITX box.  Since you mentioned that it had no fan, is it using a VIA CPU?