Hey Guys, I have a couple quick questions....

1. I'm trying to make a mandrake webserver, I have apache installed and it displays the default apache screen. I was just wondering if anyone knows of some really good web based articles on configuring apache, REMEMBER a REAL newbie. Very familiar with windows, but just starting out on linux.

2. How can check to see what "services" are running like apache so I can turn them off? Along the same line, can I schedule the service to start/stop, or the actual machine to start/stop

3. In mandrake GUI and file based, where do I change the hostname, I'm still registered as localhost.

4. I was trying too use mandrakeupdate and after I pick a server to update, it says Starting download of 'and then I get an error that says it's impossible to retrieve the list of new packages from the media 'update_source' Either this media is misconfigured and in this case you should use the software media manager to remove it and re-add it in order to reconfigure it, either it is currently unreachabgle and you should retry later...

When I run media upde and click securit updates, and select a server. Click it says "Please wait, updating media" and then I get the same error.

I've tried this with several servers and still get the same error. Does anyone have any suggestions?

1)Go to the apache site for instruction on setup:
http://httpd.apache.org/
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/
Or use google:
http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr...=Google+Search
2)At a command line type in "top" without the quotes, or "ps -aux". These will show running processes.
To schedule a job, "man cron".
To stop a process, use the "kill" command. Type in "man kill" to find more info on this.
3)To change your hostname, type"man hostname" for info.
4)Sorry, I don't use mandrake, so I don't have an answer for this one.

http://www.google.com/linux

1. For good overviews on how to configure and use Apache, you can go to http://www.tldp.org/ and search for 'apache.' That will return a plethora of good HOWTOs that you can benefit from. If you're just using the HTTP server portion (httpd), then the pertinent info is that you need to place all of your HTML files underneath the /var/www/html/ folder. So you could put a new page in place of the default by simply placing an index.html file into that folder.

2. I believe that Mandrake uses a similar method as Redhat/Fedora for service management. On the terminal, you should be able to type 'service --status-all' to view the status of all configured services. To start or stop a service you'd use this syntax on the terminal: 'service [service name] [start || stop]. If you want to schedule it to start/stop at cetrain times, you can set up a Cron job to do that. kcron is a good graphical utility to configure cron jobs.

3. I don't remeber how to change the hostname in Mandrake, but since 10.1 just came out, I decided to give it a shot on one of my slower machines. So, I'll get back with you when I figure that one out.

4. As I said in Q3, I haven't used Mandrake in a while, so I'll see if I get the same message after I do the install myself.

Hope that helps some.

Jared

2) To manually start and stop a 'daemon' process, use the 'service' command.
You need to be root to do this.

service httpd stop

Different services will have different options, like restart, reload, force-reload.
For some services like the firewall, for instance, issuing the reload command is needed to reread changes in the configuration.

(You can also do this from the Drakconf services GUI program. The gui program has info tips explaining what each service does.


3) You can issue the 'hostname <your.sites.hostname.com>' command. However a better way may be to edit the /etc/sysconfig/ file. After doing this, you may need to restart the network. You will definatly need to log out of KDE.

For changing the firewall settings, it would be best to use the shorewall configuration program in drakconf (MCC). This is the graphical 'Firewall' page.

1,2 & 3) Consider using webmin. This is a one place configuration center. If this were a remote box, or one of several rackmounted web servers, this is the program you would probably use for configuration anyway.
Another configuration option is to set up SSH. Then you could connect to you server from anywhere and run programs on the server, but the programs show up on the computer you are using ( For this you need to be running Linux or X-Win32 if its a windows machine ) This method is secure for access over the internet.

Yes, you could be in the Mall's food court, using their hot-spot, and playing LBreakout. The program would actuallly be running on your machine.