Hello

I have been attempting to set up a home web server to host some sites, and was doing well until trying to set up the DNS. The tutorials I could find suddenly got a bit confusing.

Is this something that can more easliy be done (for a beginner) using a control panel? And if so, is there a os/free control panel for Ubuntu / any distro, which is recommended?

Finally, if you install control panel, can you still do any else to the system? I assume that you can, but was wondering if there would be conflicts etc. (I really am a noob!)

I have so far only ever used the Control panels that are on 1and1 and Jumpline.com web hosts, so not very familiar with what is available.
Jumpline uses something called Phera, no idea what 1and1 used (I left them a while ago). Those are probably customized anyway aren't they, and mostly expensive commercial applications.

Looking forward to suggestions. I have heard of cpanel, and webmin, but also heard that they were not that good.....

Cheers

Jon.

I personally think webmin is good. Have you tried it yourself or did you not test it because of someone elses opinions?

i am a new linux fedora user and comming 1st time to linux ques.org here how to post my problem please guide me

No, I only read one poor review of webmin. I guess really I am looking for something that is free, and user friendly, and does everything I need, and has good documentation and good support.

Maybe I'll give webmin a try. But would be interested to know if there are better application I could use too.

Once a control panel is installed can you install others and use whichever one, your chose?

Well, I have installed webmin, and the installation process was easy enough, and there are details of my attempt as setting up DNS through terminal in there control panel, so I must have done something right. Now I just need to find a good tutorial on webmin.

A quick question on nameservers - I have my sites registered with UKreg.com and looked to direct a site to my home IP, but it said "don not use IP" so I guess I need to set up a name server - where is that done? Is that something separate?

If you are running the webserver local all you really need to do is go into your domain name registrar control panel and add an A-Record with your IP set to your domain or sub-domain.

Again, it will be the same process if you want to host multiple sites local, check your HTTPd documentation for information on setting v-host's. They all run off the same IP, but will pull files from different paths depending on the domain name called by th browser.

You will run into difficulties trying to set up a reverse DNS due to the fact, if it isn't a leased line, your ISP will already have a hostmask assigned to your IP.

What is reverse DNS for, and what is a host line? I'll google it, but extra explanations in context are always good!

Reverse DNS is an address that is resolvable two ways.

www.linuxquestions.org resolves to 64.179.4.146
but to be reversible 64.179.4.146 would need to resolve to www.linuxquestions.org, which it doesn't, but you get the picture.

If you are running a web-server off your hope ISP line, your IP address will already be reversible to a host set by your ISP. For example, "209.142.187.153" resolves to "s3.153.rb.gh.centurytel.net".

So say "209.142.187.153" is your IP address and you either set an a-record pointing to "www.test.com" with that IP or go through the trouble of nameservers and such. "www.test.com" may resolve through a DNS query to "209.142.187.153", but "209.142.187.153" would resolve to "s3.153.rb.gh.centurytel.net" the hostmask assigned by your ISP.

Nothing wrong with running it local off your home line, I do it, but we have no control over the DNS query reversibility of the IP set by your ISP, everything points to them, so there is no point in changing things. Simply set your IP as an A-Record in your domain control panel, the same can be done with the other sites you want to host on your local system. What you will need to look into are vhost, setting this up enables you to run multiple sites from the one IP address.