Creating Your Own Webserver and Hosting A Website from Your Linux Box
What is Apache?
Apache is a web server program. It comes installed and configured on most of the System. Check if it is installed on your system or not.
# apt-cache policy apache2 (On Debian based OS)
Sample Output
apache2: Installed: 2.2.22-13 Candidate: 2.2.22-13 Version table: *** 2.2.22-13 0 500 http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/debian/ wheezy/main i386 Packages 500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main i386 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
# yum search httpd (On Red Hat based OS)
Sample Output
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, security Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: ftp.iitm.ac.in * epel: mirror.smartmedia.net.id * extras: ftp.iitm.ac.in * updates: ftp.iitm.ac.in Installed Packages httpd.i686 2.2.15-28.el6.centos @updates
From the above output it is clear that Apache is installed on the box, if it is not in your case you can ‘apt‘ or ‘yum‘ the required package. Once the Apache is installed start it as.
# apt-get install apache2 (On Debian based OS) # service apache2 start
# yum install httpd (On Red Hat based OS) # service httpd start
Note: You might have to type ‘httpd‘ and not ‘apache‘ on some server Viz., RHEL. Once the ‘apache2‘ or ‘http‘ aka ‘httpd‘ server is started you could check it in your browser by going to any of following link.
http://127.0.0.1 http://localhost http://your-ip-address
This link will open into a hosted page which means Apache has been successfully installed and started.
What is MySQL?
MySQL is a database server program. It comes packed with a number of distros. Check if it installed on your system or not and where it is installed.
# whereis mysql
Sample Output
mysql: /usr/bin/mysql /etc/mysql /usr/lib/mysql /usr/bin/X11/mysql /usr/share/mysql /usr/share/man/man1/mysql.1.gz
From the above output it is clear that MySQL is installed along with the location of binary files. If in case it’s not installed, do ‘apt‘ or ‘yum‘ to install it and start it.
# apt-get install mysql mysql-server mysql-client (On Debian based OS) # service mysql start
# yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-client (On Red Hat based OS) # service mysqld start
Note: You might have to type “mysqld” in place of mysql, obviously without quotes, in some distro viz., RHEL. Check the status of MySQL, run.
# service mysql status (On Debian based OS)
Sample Output
[info] /usr/bin/mysqladmin Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.5.31, for debian-linux-gnu on i686 Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Server version 5.5.31-0+wheezy1 Protocol version 10 Connection Localhost via UNIX socket UNIX socket /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock Uptime: 11 min 58 sec Threads: 1 Questions: 106 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 467 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 115 Queries per second avg: 0.147.
The above output shows that MySQL is running for 11 min 58 sec.
What is PHP?
PHP is the server-side scripting language designed for web development and is commonly used as general purpose programming language. You have to just deploy the php script after installing php. As I said above use ‘apt‘ or ‘yum‘ to install the required package for your box.
# apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql (On Debian based OS)
# yum install php php-mysql (On Red Hat based OS)
If you successfully installed the php in your system, you could check if it is working correctly or not by creating a file “info.php” in your ‘/var/www/html‘ or ‘/var/www‘ directory (which is yourApache directory) with the content given below.
<?php
phpinfo ();
?>
Now navigate to your browser and type any of the following link.
http://127.0.0.1/info.php http://localhost/info.php http://your-ip-address/info.php
PHP Info
Which means php is installed and working correctly. Now you can build your website in yourApache directory, however it is not always a good idea to reinvent a wheel again and again. For this, there exists Content Management Framework (CMF), viz., Drupal, Joomla, WordPress. You could download the latest framework from the link provided below and can use any of these framework, however we will be using Drupal in our examples.
- Drupal : https://drupal.org/project/drupal
- Joomla: http://www.joomla.org/download.html
- WordPress: http://wordpress.org/download/
Download Drupal from the above link which would be a tar archive. Move the tar archive to your Apache directory ‘/var/www/html‘ or ‘/var/www‘. Extract it to the root of apache directory. Where ‘x.xx‘ would be version number.
# mv drupal-x.xx.tar.gz /var/www/ (mv to Apache root directory) # cd /var/www/ (change working directory) # tar -zxvf drupal-7.22.tar.gz (extract the archieve) # cd drupal-7.22 (Move to the extracted folder) # cp * -R /var/www/ (Copy the extracted archieve to apache directory)
If everything goes OK, again open your browse and navigate to below links and you will be greeted with.
http://127.0.0.1 http://localhost http://your-ip-address
Drupal Installation
Choose Your language settings.
Language Selection
Checking for requirements and file permission. Provide proper permission to the required files and folders. You may need to create certain files manually, which is not a big deal.
File Permission Checking
Setup Database, the backend process.
Database Configuration
If Database setting goes perfect profiles are installed automatically.
Database Installation
Installing Drupal
Configuring means setting ‘Site Name‘, ‘Email‘, ‘User Name‘, ‘Password‘, ‘Time Zone‘, etc.
Enter User Details
And if everything goes smooth, you will get a screen something like this.
Installation Completed
Open Your page by referring to the address http://127.0.0.1.
Welcome to Drupal
Hurrah!!!
What is Kompozer?
Kompozer is a tool that lets you work in GUI for designing a website in html and you can insert a php script anywhere you want. Kompozer made it too easy to create a web page.
- Kompozer: http://www.kompozer.net/download.php
well you don’t need to install it on most of the Linux system. Just download, extract and runKompozer.
Kompozer
If are creative, kompozer is right there for you.
What is IP?
A Few Words about Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses.
http://127.0.0.1
It is generally called loopback IP address or localhost, and it always point to the machine on which it is browsed. All the machine on a network referring to above address will loop back to its own machine.
Ipconfig/ifconfig : Run this in your terminal to know yours machine local address.
# ifconfig
Sample Output
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr **:**:**:**:**:**
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: ****::****:****:****:****/** Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:107991 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:95076 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:76328395 (72.7 MiB) TX bytes:20797849 (19.8 MiB)
Interrupt:20 Memory:f7100000-f7120000
Search for the inet addr:192.168.1.2 here 192.168.1.2 is my local IP. Any computer on your LANincluding you could refer to your hosted web page using this address.
However a computer outside of your LAN won’t be able to access your web page using this IPaddress. You will have to ask your Internet service provide to provide you with an static IP (That doesn’t change with time). Once you got your static IP address, the easiest way to find your IP is to type “My ip is” at google and note-down the result.
You won’t be able to access this IP from your own machine nor any other machine on your LAN. However you can use a proxy server (www.kproxy.com) to access your hosted page using your static IP. But before that you need to setup virtual server and your service provider will surely be helpful in this regard.
How to Setup Virtual Server
Hmmm! That’s not difficult at all. First you need to know the port apache is using, which in most of the case is 80.
# netstat -tulpn
output would be something like:
tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 6169/apache2
Now go to your router which generally is http://192.168.1.1 and user name/password would beadmin-admin, however it could be different in your case based on service provider and area.
Next go to Virtual server tab. Fill the port number, service name and local IP address, in form and save. Ask for assistance from your ISP.
Setup Virtual Server
Remember You will only be able to access this web server from your machine, any other machine on your LAN or a computer on Internet when your machine is UP and running MySQL andApache simultaneously.
With great power, comes big responsibility. And now its your responsibility to safeguard your machine. Never give your IP address to any unknown person till you know your ways in and out.
We surely will try to cover the issues related to security and how to safeguard it. Feel free to give your valuable comments and share it with your friends. You know ‘Sharing is Caring‘. Your Positive comment encourages and motivates us.
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