Hello, so I installed SUSE 10.0 and went to set up the "HTTP Server" thinking it was the same as a web server, which now I'm not even sure is what it's actually called!

My problem is I'm trying to start an e-business and I want to build the website myself (using PHP nuke), then pay someone to host it. For developmental purposes I wish to create a website server within my LAN so I can see how it's working on my Windows machine (save me the Windows bashes thx!). Well when I attempted to use the HTTP feature in YaST2 with SUSE it apparently reprogrammed my router (may have been coincedental ISP problems) and brought down all 4 computers. This took me a good chunk of time to fix. Now I'm afraid to try it again. Is HTTP = Web Server = Website Server? If not, what should I do and what is it actually called?


Thanks.

http servers are web servers yes, you'll have installed apache, the worlds most used http server ever - so you're in good hands! there is no way at all that installing and starting apache could interfere with a router, just not possible. essentially once apache is installed and it's httpd service is started goint to http://yourwebserver will show you a default apache page, which you can then move forward to configure as you see fit. you will benefit from reading up a little. http://apache.org

Thanks, I just started it up again error-free. I think my problem was that I had assigned it the default gateway IP or comcast had coincidentally hiccupped at the same time I was making my first attempt.

Now, does anyone know of a HOWTO for setting up the server permissions part after activating APACHE and PHP? Right now I get an "Access Forbidden!" message.

1st yast setup a static IP for your site (i used x.x.x.2 here)

In Yast2 two the HTTP Server wizard does everything
installs Apache and you select the network card (you only need one)

Next Next.
open the above IP address in your windows machine
a page declaring It Works should appear

your website is here by default
/srv/www/htdocs/index.html

paste all your website there and your all done

So I've got the website to work, but to avoid unintended changes to the actual server, I'd like to set the permissions for user "cweep" to allow changes to the /srv/ directory including all subdirectories. What now? Also I'd like to thank those of you that have helped me up to this point.

This might work; Open a shell and become root (type "su" and your root password).

Type "konqueror &" without the quotes. A file manager window should open. BE very CAREful. You are root in that file manager and you can bork anything.

Maneuver to "/" at the top of the file tree. Right-click on /srv, and select Properties. Click the tab for Permissions. Check the box for "Apply Changes to All Subfolders and Their Contents". Set whatever permissions you want for Owner, Group, and Others. Hit OK, and you are there.

Let us know how it goes. Do you want to set it up so that you can see the site anywhere on the web?

Good luck.

C

Congrats on getting the website up.

Your last post made no sense to me. You don't want to mess up the local server, so you want to give yourself (cweep) permission to write in places cweep shouldn't be able to?

It could be done easily. You should type "man chown" into the terminal, and read up on how to change the owner of files. I'll give you 90% of the command, and you'll have to read to find out the missing 10 - There will probably be a huge problem with doing this. Apache has a user associated with it. It defaults to www-data on most systems. If Apache runs as www-data, and you change the ownership of the files it is supposed to server to cweep, Apache most likely will fail.

You could change the user Apache runs as, but that can/will cause problems down the road when you try to install something else to integrate with Apache, and it expects to work with the www-data user, and instead finds things run/owned by cweep.

The best solution is to leave Apache as is, and not to change the ownership of the webpages to your account. It makes no difference who owns it really, if you can change it, you can mess it up, so it doesn't matter if you make the mistake as root, or make it as cweep if cweep owns the files.

If you still have deep concerns about things, try this: create 2 sites on the machine (test.site.com and good.site.com), or siteA.com and siteB.com if subdomains aren't your thing. Only work on one of the sites, and leave the other as a saftey valve. If you hose something on the test site, just delete all of it, and copy over the good data from the other site. Try again to get what you wanted to happen.

Write back with any questions/problems.

Peace,
JimBass

Well I would rather limit the margin for error to the /srv/ directory while I'm using PHP Nuke to make my website. So what I'd like to do is allow user "cweep" to edit that website, which is contained in /srv/. I tried using the GUI but I can't seem to find the area that provides the option to change those permissions. Currently user "cweep" is only a part of the "users" group. I know how to create users and groups, but allowing them permission to the certain directories is the problem. I'm not attempting to change APACHE, but instead to get the PHPNuke files into the directory and change them using the GUI without switching to root.

Maybe that will help to clarify?

That doesn't change what I said earlier though. To work in the live site directory, you should be root. Allowing cweep to own and control those files is not any safer than forcing yourself to be root. Besides, changing the owner to cweep will mess with apache. You can change the owner with the command I gave you, just by adding one tag, but again, don't do it.

Read "man chown" without quotes from a terminal, and you'll be set. Become root, copy the files to where they need to be, change the owners on them to whoever the owner should be, and you're set.

Peace,
JimBass

Alright, thanks guys. All I have left to do is install MySQL...haha! That should be an adventure. Is installing it really as hard as it looks? Is there other DB management software out there that might work better?

SUSE has an application that installs packages automatically, is this compatible w/ MySQL or similiar software?


P.S. I decided to go with the advice given to me and work on the site as root, no permissions were changed.

There's a good chance SUSE already has MySQL out of the box - although to be honest, I don't know. You'll find getting it up and running is fairly straight forward though, even if you have a little trouble getting your head around it to begin with.

I'm not sure if you meant "out of the box" literally or not, but I downloaded this (the EVAL version) so I'm fairly certain it might not have come with it. Any good step-by-step HOWTO's you know of?

At the moment, I'm going through lots of HOWTOs on www.tldp.org for my own purposes, you may want to check it out yourself, it's got enough to keep me occupied for a few weekends.

Didn't find any MySQL HOWTO's there, but I did find one at www.reallylinux.com/docs/basicmysql.shtml. This HOWTO is for 5.0. Thanks for all the help guys!