Web Server Questions
 

Hey, I'm thinking about moving from my current server to SliceHost... I like the idea of being able to do whatever I want, without having to contact support if some free script doesn't work because of their permissions or something stupid...

Now the issues and questions:
I haven't started a server from scratch before... I don't think I fully understand what I'm getting in to.

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite familiar with servers, and computers in general... and I've played around with shell a bit.

But I need to know what the best OS to choose would be, as well as how to set up the http and ftp and lighty or at least the best programs to choose and use. I can figure out the installation process I'm sure.

Domain management software...

What does one need at a minimum to have a decent server setup?

Thanks in advance for any responses,
Mark

that is really in depth stuff your doing. Unless you are hosting and owning your own server towers I think your going a little over board. I can do pretty much what ever I want with my dedicated server with Cyberwurx.com, and if you get managed servers like we have set up they will install scripts for you with 0 hassles and within about an hour its done. They are VERY reliable.

I was actually just looking at slicehost for some really low end stuff. Don't they provided dedicated with root access? From looking at their site it looked like it was self managed all the way.

As far as your question, I don't know about what others like but I use CentOS. You can "yum" the majority of the useful packages. It's just learning the config files from there.

CPanel lets you do most of the things in a somewhat automated manner but gets in the way for custom stuff. It forces you to do everything its way.

If you are going to go completely dedicated you'll need about a month of studying to get up to speed on the various config files. named.conf, postfix, httpd.conf, etc.

You actually need to look at what you want to run on the server.

Static or dynamic content? Movies are streamed or downloaded? How many sites? How many hits/pageviews etc?

Give out some more information on this and you might be able to get a general idea of what you server requirements are.

I'm running TGP's, Blogs, and always adding other stuff... I do have some videos through flash, and I'm adding a tubesite soon. I know what I want, generally, but I don't know how to set up the DNS servers for my domains, or a control panel to handle stuff like that.

I would use
lighttpd (instead of apache)
mysql
php5
phpMyAdmin

then something like cPanel, or is that not necessary? and I'm not paying 425/yr for that either... so I'll need something else if I do need it lol.

and what distro of linux would you suggest? Slicehost Offers:
gentoo
debian
centOS
ubuntu

Dreamhost has just been more problems than it's worth lately.
For the same price, I can get more memory and actually be able to do what i need to do on slicehost.

They also offer Fedora and Arch distros.

Why would you need to pay $425 a year? Seems kind of steep to me. Decent fully managed server should run from around 200, depends what software you will want on and how "blow" up you will want the server to be.

I dont think it reallly matters too much what your os is, but yeah it depends on what scripts you are going to use. But if you have established tgp sites right now then you should try and set them up on a server using the same os as the one your on right now to make the transition a little smoother....If things are wotrking smoothly on one os then why change it.

good afternoon blackout. if you are still in need of some help with this project let me know. Our staff is designed to work with you on issues just like the ones mentioned. Hit me up on email or ICQ and we can discuss things in greater detail. thanks

I ended up going with mosso.com for my low end stuff. I think they might be related to SliceHost because their FAQ has references to SliceHost in it. I went with the 5.2 CentOS minimal.

If you are going to run your own you'll want to get a book on "DNS and Bind". Mosso lets you use their name servers if you want to, but once you learn it's not that hard to do yourself.

"yum" can be used to install a lot of different things.

yum install bind -y
yum install mysqld -y
yum install httpd -y
yum install php -y
yum install php-mysql -y

FreeBSD.. solid, stable, secure :)