i am in the process of setting up a dedicated home server and i would like to set it up to host a website and act as a ftp server. however, i would like them to be seperate from one another. ie) www.webserver.whatever to connect to the website with no ftp files then a different connection method for the file server and none of the website.

is this possible with one server?

so far i do not have anything configured just gathering info for the project.

also any advice on starting either server would be much appreciated!

Yes, easily possible. Just make sure you turn off FTP/file/directory access in Apache so your web pages can't be used to browse your machine. Then run an FTP server. They'll each have their own port, and the two won't interact. Same as on any other kind of server..servers can run many services at once, easily.

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thank you very much for the answer.
it looks like i will be running apache2 for both server sections
i am thinking about dyn-dns to connect to the internet as i have a dynamic ip address

how should i set it up / get the tutorials on how to set up a 2 server in one station setup?
i am comfortable working in the command line and ubuntu server would be an acceptable route as it will be a dedicated server
however a gui environment would be just as viable if not more so

Since you are using Ubuntu, the Ubuntu Wiki pages would be a good source of information that is geared specifically for your distribution. You should also install your applications from the repository instead of trying to build from source when possible. The version in the repository has been configured to work with your distribution and will save you some trouble.

how do i have two addresses for a single machine, one to direct to the website one to direct to ftp over the web?
may be a simple question but im new to it all

You don't need two addresses. TCP/IP has 'ports'...each service uses a different port. So, web services typically respond on port 80, FTP on port 21. Think of it this way; you have a house with a street address. If you want to add another 'door', you don't need to buy a second house....you'd add it somewhere there wasn't already a door. Same address, different way in.

haha makes sense and i just had one of those moments feeling dumb cause i knew ports but not the whole :80 thing in the web browser and all that
thanks for the explanation and im gettin a few podcasts and things too, again this is a learning process for me and a huge learning curve. i think that this will be a large part of my itgs higherlevel assesment.

ok soo any advice on the most user friendly software? again i can handle a command line pretty well
apache2 does not have too much of a detailed tutorials page but havent done too much digging around on the rest of the web

im assuming that each of my 2 ports would lead me to a separate directory in my filesystem?
also now that i understand the one ip two ports which server software would allow me to configure these with the least amount of hassle?

quote:"assume-an ass between you and me" by an old friend of mine

thanks again for your continuing help and support

Above all else, this would be my primary piece of advice: If you are going to run a server, you have a responsibility to learn to secure it properly as your actions will impact other systems beyond your own.

I would also recommend that you install your applications from your distribution packages rather than trying to build them all yourself from source. This will save you a lot of trouble trying to configure them. Apache is pretty easy and there are only a few configuration files that need to be modified for a basic installation.

FTP tends to be insecure, at least in its default state, largely because authentication information is transmitted in plain text. Be careful with it and make sure that you don't set your FTP directories to be unduly permissive just to make something work (it has happened). Consider using vsftp, which is a better choice.

Ultimately, I imagine that you will want to have SSH capability to access your system remotely. When you do go this route, I would strongly encourage you to use key based (password-less) authentication. Similarly if you install any applications like PhpMyAdmin, either make them accessible by localhost only or put them on a secure web page. If you put them on localhost, you can still ssh in (or make an ssh proxy) and then access them.

A lot of people seem to like webmin, which will provide a web based GUI for many of your server tasks. You might want to investigate that, however, I am of the opinion that learning the command line will be far more rewarding and beneficial in the long run.

Of course, if you run into any problems or have any questions and can't find a solution with Google, you can always post it here. Often times looking at the logs will provide necessary information to solve the problem and putting the error message into google can be enlightening.

In response to your question about leading to different directories on your system:

In the httpd.conf file for apache you will have to declare DocumentRoot, which is typically something like /srv/ht-docs/something. That directory will be the root for you website and the location for your index.php or whatever it is you want to put there. Note, there are a number of places where you need to place that directory.

FTP however does not require something like a document root. I would advise disabling anonymous user login and only allow users to login that are known to your Linux system. vsftpd will, if set up to allow users to log in, use your Linux users and, when they log in, lead them to their respective home directories. You can define a webadmin user that will go to the directory of your website to upload the files for you website by setting the home folder of that user to the DocumentRoot that you define in apache.