Hi,

This is my first post on this forum, so please don't bash me if this has been discussed a million times. I am brand new to Linux. I was just hired on by a SMB to bring their operations away from relying solely on MS Excel, and move into the future by designing a relational database as well as software to manage it.

I am beginning to research where to go from here, and with my previous experience with Windows crashes, I want to recommend for the company to go with a Linux / MySQL / possible PHP solution.

So, help me get started. Right now they have one server running SuSe Linux to manage their files. I'm wanting to set up a test machine to be a web server, and seeing as the one server they have here is running SuSE, I wanted to see if that would be a good place to start.

So, if it is, let me know, and let me know where the best place to get the correct distro is. I don't know if there is a more server ready version, or if I just need the standard version. I've never really installed Linux, so please give me some tips.

Hope this all made sense.

Hi, and welcome to the forums!

If you're new to Linux, then I'd recommend SUSE - it's easy to use and is very intuitive. There are other distros which are more locked down out of the box because they were created to be used on servers, but SUSE is a perfectly valid option if this is your first time setting up a Linux server.

The standard version of SUSE will do fine. Make sure the latest and greatest version of Apache is installed (via YAST), along with MySQL and PHP, and then all you need to do is configure the httpd.conf to include the PHP module and whatnot.

Will this webserver be internal (network) or external (internet)? If it is internal, then just installing Apache, MySQL and PHP and setting up Apache to use them will do fine - the web server will then be accessible via http://name_of_computer/ from any networked computer. However, if you want to setup a webserver for the internet, then you will also have to setup a DNS server. But, I do not advise using a copy of SUSE which is not locked down as an internet server.

If you would like my recommendation, then EnGarde Linux is a great solution. It is easy to setup, is very secure, and the documentation will have you rolling in no time. Just MHO.

Best of luck, and please let us know if you have any problems!

-jk

There are a couple of books that you may want to read through.

'Linux Server Security', by Michael D. Dauer.
'PHP and MySQL Web Development' by Luke Welling & Laura Thomson.

The first will help you isolate and lock down the Web Server. Part of this entails not installing or removing all unnecessary programs and services. So in the end, you will have so little installed that the choice of distro won't make much difference. SuSE does include AppArmour which may be a plus in your case.

Ok, so I've been doing some more homework, and here's what I've got.

The initial version will just be for me to play with. I've got a box at home I think that I can wipe and install the standard version of SUSE on. However, eventually I will want to build a server that will host both locally and over the internet (our company has members all over the US and also some in Mexico).

So, what's better about Enterprise Server? Is it worth the $654.99 that I found on CDW?

Thanks a ton, you guys are very helpful so far.

Although it's a little dated, here's a very helpful tutorial on setting up LAMP under SuSE Have fun.

You don't need to spend money right away in order to set this up either. Start small, and if your needs require additional purchases go ahead and buy it, but I don't think you need it just to get going