Okay, I got the latest Red Hat, and I put up apache and everything. It works very good on my LAN, however I want to serve files over the www and not just internally. How do I configure the server to be open for everyone and publish it on the net via apache that means (from the apache www directory)?

Welcome to LQ.

How are you connected to the internet? You will most likely need to forward port 80 requests to the server from your router/firewall.

I'm connected to the internet via a cable modem connected to a firewall/router (with HTTP and FTP Server ports open, any other I should open?). How do I forward requests to the server?

How you forward requests will depend on your hardware. Most firewalls and routers will have this functionality via a web browser. Look for something called "NAT" "NATting" or "Pot Forwarding".

Is it same as "Port Redirection"? To go one step further, what do I do when I find "Port Forwarding"? What does it mean?

It may also be called port redirection. It will forward all requests made to a specific port on your router (the device with the public IP) to a port on a machine withing your local network.

Okay so if I write my IP to the internal server let's say it's 192.168.0.25 would I just enter that adress in my firewall? And what ports should I redirect? All incoming? How's that defined?

Lets break it down this way...with an example.

I have a linksys router connected to my cable modem, and my computers connect to the linksys. If I open a web browser and type 192.168.1.1, it takes me to my router's configuration application. 192.168.1.1 is the LAN IP the router gives itself , and it then assigns my two computers the IPs 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.101. The actual IP from your internet provider is assigned by the modem and given to the router. It will not start with 192.xxx.xxx.xxx. These are typically LAN IPs, assigned, as I said, by the router. So, the router takes on the IP given by your provider, and re-assigns the LAN IPs to the computers.

So, once I'm in my router's config app, There is a tab labeled "forwarding." In this tab, you can specify port ranges (for http you only need port 80) and then assign all requests in that range to any one of the LAN IPs assigned to your computers. My Linux box got 192.168.1.101, and this is the one on which I run the webserver, so in the forwarding tab I chose to have requests in the port range 80 through 80 (yep, you have to put them both in there) redirected to IP 192.168.1.101. That's all. Then all requests from the outside world via the web get patched through to the webserver.

I hope this is more clear now, I realize I've been a bit redundant here...sorry...I'm tired today...

Good luck....

cheers jeffreybluml

Thank you both of you, it works now. However, what is the standard FTP port?

It is port 21...

A good bookmark to keep for portnumbers is:
http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

Thank you all for a wonderful thread. It made it crystal clear for me to setup my own apache server. I own a domain name and want it to go to my server, how do I get it to point to it. I understand all the IP stuff now and can type my IP address to get to my site but I don't understand how to get the name to it.

You got to login on your domain and point it to your IP from there. Or just email the company and they should be able to transfer the domain (often costs)