I downloaded the free version of Mandriva and I'm ready to turn it into a dedicated server to host my webpage, pop3/smtp clients and so on. Unfortunately I'm brand new to Linux, so I can't seem to figure out how to make this work. I was hoping the whole thing would be more intuitive.

I've been using windows server, and that was pretty easy. Just create a rootfolder and put your webpagefiles in it, and turn a DNS address to your IP and make sure your PC is on at all times. But then I came across Apache, MySQL and stuff like that, so I'm ready to be Linuxified. So the question is; What do I do to make my Mandriva installation the home for my own webpage, and have apache and MySQL as available features for my website as well?

I'm really hoping for "Linux For Dummies" type of answers here, so don't go all technical and lingo on me, or else I'll get nowhere. Even more hopeful, don't like to read, so please be as short as possible, and pleeeease don't direct me to any tutorials or "dedicated helpsites". They always seem to write too much about simple things, leaving me more confused than I was before coming there.

An example of that is when I tried to figure out how to make graphics work with FreeBSD, and every page I went to explained what Xorg or X11 was and how it worked and when and where and who developed it.

Then I asked at a forum and a guy said; "type xorgconfig"

I nearly broke into tears, it was so beautifully simple.

Haha - don't you worry - we'll take care of you But one advice first - Mandriva or the formerly known as Mandrake Linux is quite pathetic at handling server-ly duties. If you really intend to setup a robust server with all those cool services running, then you'd need something on the lines of Fedora or Redhat Enterprise. But anyway, Mandriva should give you the starting base and you can toy around and learn all the basics before you reach out for the more hardcore distros.

As for your Linux server, hosting your web-page is as simple as dumping the pages into the rootfolder for windows. But you need to have Apache webserver (known as httpd on linux) up and running. If you selected the Web-server option while installing Mandriva - it should already be in place and running.

Still you can do a quick check and see if it is running or not.
Issue the following command:


The output, as you can see on the second line, will inform you that it is indeed running (the numbers in the brackets are known as PID or Process ID - a certain progressive number which linux allocates to a service when it is first run. The PID uniquely identifies the service).

Alternatively, you can issue the following command too - to check whether Apache is running:


As you can see from above - its the same listing as the prior command except for this one is in a more tabular format and also provides you with the path from where the service was started. The numbers in the first column are the corresponding PIDs.

Now under your /var/www/ folder - which is created automatically upon installation of Apache, you'll find another folder called html - you simply change over to this folder by using:


This folder by default is the place where apache looks for your homepage, quite similar to the public_html on asta or the rootfolder on windows. This is where you index.html/php should reside. You are free to create any level of subfolders under this and dump whatever pages/images/files here...

When you access your server by typing it's IP in your browser, Apache will look straight into this folder, pick out your html/php page and show it to you. This is a very good method of creating and testing your site at home before dumping it on any public server on the net

Hope this will get you started at least... more later.

Regards,
m^e

I found this while looking up your build of linux, and it is about as technical as I can get....



I am framiliar with getting mandrake and redhat to work with webhosting, but I am not framiliar with Mandriva.....

Well even Neo-Mandrake (Mandriva) is a better server platform than Windoze. As long as you're just trying to run a small personal server, you'll never need one of those "hardcore" distros.

Oh, madcrow, please don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. To host anything on the net, I would only use Unix Os. I totally agree with you, you can use any Linux or unix client.

I totally disagree with windows, though I am forced to use it at home, because that is the only thing that the family knows. Slowly getting them into linux.

Can someone provide some info on mandriva, so that I might be able to help out?

-William