Can anyone help, I'm trying to set a webserver on a PC at home. I have a static IP and a linux box with Mandriva LE 2005 Installed on it. I'm wondering if I am able to use the KDE Graphic interface on it to set up the server. I installed most of the Server Packages. If anyone can suggest any better(easier) versions to use, please advise. By the way did i mention that I was a Newbie to all this.

You can use the Mandrake Control Center and from there navigate to Network and put up some servers. After that you will have them running and you may need to open some ports in your firewall. If you have a high security level you may need to play a little with your /etc/hosts.allow or lower the secuity level. I noticed that level 4 was almost too high to have servers running on.

If you want to update your software you can use rpmdrake (you can get to it via MCC, Mandrake Control Center).

Regards.

Sorry to sound like a total Newbie, but where is the Mandrake Control Center????

Don't worry I found the MCC. I'm getting some success with my Webserver, howerver I'm not too sure on how to setup the email server. Could you please help here. Thanx

I think that email server should be in there too, just where the webserver is.

As I said, you may need to open some ports to make it work. Remember that a email server needs to be able to use both POP3/IMAP and SMTP, so you need to open at least two ports.

Depending on what server software you use your mails are most likely to be put somewhere in /var. See the manuals for the server for more information on that one.

If you want more help you should specify exactly what software you are using. Are you going to have the mail server open for public or just as an intern server? Because if you have it open to the Internet you will have to make some more configurations to make sure that it will not be used as a spam proxy. This happened to me once and I got blacklisted by most mailservers.

Regards.

Sorry.....lets do one thing at a time......I'm working on my webserver and I am trying to host my website....I set up my proxy server to my web site. How ever where do i go for here. I've set my smoothwall up with the right port forward ports but i cant ping the website from another computer on a separate internet connection. And how do i put content on my site....I think I have alot reading to do...right??

Ok. The reason why you can't ping it may be that the firewall is blocking ping probes. Check out your firewall to find out.

Why do you need a mail server for your website? And what do you mean with that proxy? Do you host your website on your own server? Do you have an additional proxy on the server, too?

What software are you using for your web/proxy/mail servers?

Regards.

O.K. Remember I'm a newbie to all this, baring that in mind, I'm pretty useless. I think it comes from using Windows to much and it has nullified my young mind. I am trying to unlearn all the crap I've learned in Windows. I know a lot about windows for i have worked in the computer industry for many years now. I feel like a complete idiot trying to learn again.

Without giving you my life story....I'll tell you what I am trying to achieve. I have got a number of websites. I'm sick of paying for hosting also I would rather learn how to do it myself. All I want to do is be able to Host my own site/have emails for those sites/and be able to update my site from a remote location.

Now I have Installed Mandriva 10.1 LE 2005 with all the server packages. It comes with Apache and a heap of other packages. I was just wondering is there and easy way to configure all this or have i bitten off more than I can chew.

By the way, thanx heaps for you time!

OK. So now you should go to the MCC > Security > Firewall and close everything but:

22 (SSH, so you can control it remotely)
25 (SMTP, your mailserver)
80 (HTTP, your website)
110 or 143 (POP3 or IMAP, your choice, maybe both)

Then go to MCC > Network and from here you go to where you add services/servers that should be running (I am not really sure, since I don't have Mandrake available right now) and put on Apache and your mailserver (sendmail, qmail, or something) and at last OpenSSHd (maybe it is just called sshd, not sure).

When those are running you should be able to do telnet your.ip.number.here 80 or whatever port you want to test, and if everything is running you should get a connection there. If not, something is either blocking the port, or nothing is running on that port.

From here you should configure the servers a little bit. Check out /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, I guess your apache confs are there and sshd's are in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

Maybe there are some graphical tools to configure them, I am not sure here. Check around a little bit, perhaps you will find something useful.

From what you have told me I can't see why you need a proxy of any kind?

I am not sure if I have any more info to give you on this. If you want more info you need to be more specific on the software (ie "I have sendmail version X and need to add this mailaddress").

Regards.

See I think thats were the problem is. There is nothing about adding servies/servers in my MCC. I'm lost, I supposes I'll keep trying

MCC > System > Services

Here you will have a lot of services running, do not care for those you do not recognize, just care for those you want to install.

Now what do I do.........what do I have to do here

Hi,

I have a similar setup with regards to running Mandrake 10.1, Apache 2.0, PHP & MySQL. I have successfully set up the web server and am running some websites. (tikiwiki.org is a great product)

My problem is the mail side, and am hoping you can help here. I don´t need to set up a full mail server, but do want to send mail out from my sites. I can´t seem to configure sendmail to do this.

The from php.net I can tell that the mail() function needs access to the sendmail binaries. As I believe this is set correctly, I tried to test sendmail through KDE Kontact. I have set up the outgoing mail to be sent via sendmail. I have tested sending mail and Kontact reports that the mail is sent. I have check the files in the mqueue directory and can see that there are some queued emails.

Can someone help put me on the right track to solve this problem.

Maarten