I'm pretty new to all this. I've set up a linux box on my network to run my own web server. Running Mandrake 10 Official. I'm having problems configuring apache to work properly. When I run "apachectl start" i get this error :

httpd2: Could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName

I am using "no-ip" to forward my dynamic ip to the following domain bcomsolutions.no-ip.info

I set the domain name to that. I'm not sure exactly what to set for the hostname. I am using apache that installed with mandrake.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Nothing wrong there. It is just a warning. Since you have not configured the domain name like localhost or myserver ..... it is using 127.0.0.1 which is by default the localhost ip address.

Dont worry about it.

So you're saying that apache should then be started?

If this is the case, must have some configuration issues then, because when i type in my IP it says connection refused.

Is there some way I can test my config files to figure out what is wrong?

Make sure it's bound to the eth0 interface... (or whatever your network card is)..
You should see something like this
BindAddress *

If it's commented out I believe it uses just the 127.0.0.1 loopback interface and will not work with your external ip address.

So uncomment and apachectl restart

To test if Apache works, do try the address http://127.0.0.1 or http://localhost

One of these should work if you are running apache. For accessing your apache server through IP there could be more issues (like router settings...)

OK i found the BindAddress * line, uncommented it. When i run apachectl restart i get:

Starting httpd2: Syntax error on line 77 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd2.conf:
Invalid command 'BindAddress', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[FAILED]

Any thoughts?