Karayiannis - Linux Web Server Development: A Step-by-Step Guide for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux Distributions

Table of Contents

Introduction

This book guides you through some simple steps to deploying a professional Web server for your home or your office. You may ask yourself, Do I really need a full-fledged Web server for my home or office? Why should I set one up? Possible answers are:

You wish to set up and maintain a Web site for your job or personal interests in order to avoid the expense of hiring someone else to do the work.

You wish to do something a little more sophisticated than a free Web hosting site will allow. While there are many free Web hosting sites, these sites typically do not offer advanced features. For example, your Web site may need to perform database queries or you may wish to show the input from a Web camera on your Web site.

You wish to learn more about the Internet-related technology by following a hands-on approach.

Whatever the case, by reading this book you will be able to do the following:

Turn (even) a painfully old computer into a Web server using free Open Source programs.

Configure your Operating System (OS) to support the Web Server service, by providing the appropriate IP address and TCP port numbers.

Configure your router to make your Web server available for the entire Internet.

Use a DDNS (Dynamic Domain Name Service) service to obtain a free Domain Name for your site (e.g., name.ddns_provider.com).

Utilize o nline network tools for checking the connectivity, performance, and status of the site. You will even create a network tool that returns the IP address of the visitor.

Learn about the underlying technologies of the Web and start building simple HTML or advanced PHP and MySQL Web sites.

What makes this book different is that it guides you from the beginning to the end of the process of setting up a Web server. The only requirement is a computer with an Internet connection.

Web Server Setup Overview

The following paragraphs are an overview of the steps you will follow in order to set up the Web server. Dont worry if you dont understand some of the terms/concepts found in the overview the terms/concepts in the overview will be explained in later chapters.

After you choose the Operating System for your server as well as the Web server program, you must configure the Operating System network layer. For example, you may need to open the TCP ports required by the server program and provide a static IP address for the server computer.

Using the Virtual Servers service provided by your router, you will redirect HTTP requests destined to the routers sole public IP address to the private IP address of your server.

By registering your domain name with a Dynamic DNS (DDNS) service, you will map your routers public IP address to a domain name, e.g., webserver.dynu.com , at no cost.

You will run the Web server and even start multiple Virtual Servers (this is unrelated to the routers Virtual Servers service) that will run in parallel, dispatching different content according to a set of rules that you configure.

You will learn how to do simple administrative tasks; read log files, view graphs that show the servers activities, etc.

You will use online network tools to ensure that the site behaves from outside your Local Area Network (LAN) as expected.

You will enhance the Web site with PHP dynamic content and query a database that you build using MySQL .