Hello all -

I am a Linux server newbie. I set up Fedora Core 3 on an old box. I've managed to get http (apache), ftp, and remote ssh to work. My goal for this box is for it to be my local test location (on my LAN) for building webpages that I can later upload to the internet.

My question is this: Suppose I want to build a website at http://mywebsite.com. I have one page at http://mywebsite.com/page1.html and another page at http://mywebsite.com/page2.html. If I have a link on the first page pointing to the second page (and it is not a relative link) the link won't work on my local server. Is there any way I can "spoof" (not sure that is the right term) my domain name on my local server so that when I am on my local server and click a link for http://mywebsite.com/page2.html it will actually go to my local page?

I hope I have made that question clear enough. I am a new to this server stuff so I don't know if this is completely impossible, very hard, or easy.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you.


Rundi

Set up your own DNS server if you want to do it for a whole LAN. If you're just doing development from one workstation, just add the domain to /etc/hosts with the server's IP. Don't forget to remove it when you move to the real server or you will have no end of headaches.

How so? I thought anything in /etc/hosts wouldn't effect the actual pages of the website.

Also, how hard is setting up the DNS? About the same as setting up apache and ftp or harder?

Thanks.

Rundi

i would recommend the host file, if its just for one record; this will by far be the simplest way. setting up an entire bind, while a good learning excercise, is like using a 12 guage to kill al cockroach.

You could use something more lightweight than bind (dnsmasq comes to mind), but if you are only working with one workstation, then the hosts solution is a hundred times easier.
It won't affect the website, but it will affect what your client thinks is the website: you'll still see the local server, so if you have problems on the production server, you might not notice.

Ok, then it looks like the host solution is what I want to do. I will try to go and do that and if I run into any difficulties I'll come back.

Thanks to both of you for the responses.


Rundi

One more question. When you say

do you mean adding "mywebsite.com" to the line for 127.0.0.1 or adding "mywebsite" to a new line which would contain 192.168.1.1 (or whatever my local LAN ip for the machine was)?

Thanks.

Rundi

Add a line like:
Of course, substitute correct values.

That's what I kind of thought. But that brings up a slightly different question.

I have my server where the website is located for construction. And, I have this computer I am writing on, and where I will access that local copy of the website from the server to work on it.

Both of these computers are assigned IPs by my Linksys router. However, they are currently being handed out dynamic IPs. Thus, every time the IP of my server changed I would have to go into etc/hosts/ and change that line of the file you just explained to me.

Of course, I could do that. But it would be easier if I could assign a static IP to my server so I only had to set the file once. I know it can be done because I have done it with a Win XP system on the Linksys router. But I don't have a GUI on my server and I have no idea how to give the server a static IP.

Any chance you could explain that to me, or will I have to edit my etc/hosts file once a day?

Maybe it would just be easier to set static IP for the entire LAN at the Linksys end of things. I know how to do that.

Rundi

Well, I'm not quite sure how FC3 configures networking, but I think it's set up in /etc/sysconfig/networking/device/ifcfg-eth0.