I am trying to setup a Fedora distro to serve as a web server with Apache, PHP, mySQL, Perl, Python, etc... I installed everything and there is no GUI, which is fine since the box will run faster without it. I ran yum check-update for a list of available updates and then ran yum update to get them. I was able to turn on Apache by running apachectl start.

I am unsure how to do the following:

Best practices on security and services - is there a utility i can from a windows machine that will target the server and tell me off potential problems with the box (sort of like Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer)

I don't understand where the actual files go after Apache starts. I did a dir command at the root prompt and there are no directories anywhere.

Is there a command to get a list of all installed apps that I can print out. Most of the time after I type a command it gets piped to the screen and most of the content scrolls off so you can't see it.

Is there a remote utility (like webmin) that I can run from another machine that has a GUI that will allow me to edit config files and setup the specific applications. I want to setup this box as a test server for a web development.

Is there a way to startup Apache, mySQL and PHP after the box boots or are those items automatically added to some startup process after the first time i initiate them?

I have read plenty of faqs and books, but they all approach it from a generic standpoint (downloading the specific app, running config and make, etc...). I am assuming that Apache and the other apps have already been installed and setup based on the installation from Fedora. Am I wrong in assuming this?

Is there a specific faq I can turn to for people who are doing just what I am doing with Fedora?

I don't need to do this with Fedora - I am willing to use any distro as long as it is easy to use and setup. I don't mind learning, but I don't want this to take up too much time...

Any help from the experts is greatly appreciated!!! Thanks in advance...

You've asked a lot of questions. I'll try and address some of them.

By default, I believe that webpages need to be placed in

/var/www/htdocs/

This would correspond with http://localhost/. This can be changed however by modifying /etc/apache/httpd.conf.

To stop the screen from scrolling you have two options. First, you can pipe the contents of your "list" command into the more command ... 'ls -al | more'. You can also pipe the contents of the command into a text file ... 'ls -al > txtfile.txt' and then examine the contents of the text file using your favorite editor. As for a command to list all installed programs, in Fedora you'd use the rpm command (with some extra options specified).

The easiest way to remotely admin your server is over ssh (secure) or rsh (insecure). It's not GUI, but it gets the job done.

As for automatically starting MySQL and Apache (PHP is not an application or service, and thus does not have to be "started"), there are GUI tools in Fedora that allow you to determine which services will be started automatically. You could also drop down to the command line and go to /etc/init.d (I believe) and you will find all of the start up scripts there.

I would assume if you did a "full" setup during installation, Apache and MySQL would be installed and turned on. However, you may have to go in and configure the services initially before you'll get any results.

Good luck.

The sections in here on configuring a Web server etc. are good summaries:

http://www.brennan.id.au/

Red Hat's Enterprise documentation is also relevent (and freely downloadable).

The command-line utility to set which services run on bootup is /sbin/chkconfig. To start, stop etc. services use the /sbin/service command:

/sbin/service <service-name> <start/stop/restart/status>