I want to host an FTP site at my house with residential DSL on one of my Slack boxes for streaming mp3s and hosting web pages. I was told I would need a static IP address for this. Is that the only way-could I use IP masquerading?

you dont need a static ip. i used to do this (on a windows machine, but same concept) with a dynamic ip address. in my router there is a setting for DDNS (dynamic dns). so i made a (free) account on dyndns.org and used that hostname so that people could access the resource via the fqdn, rather than the ip address--even though it was dynamic and changed frequently.

My router is a Westell Versalink-I don't seem to have a DDNS option. Can I still stream audio to people on the web? I have online webspace.

Check, maybe dyndns.org offers dynamic ip client for linux (there are some for windows) which automatically connects to dyndns and updates the information, when your ip changes. Off course, if your ip does not change very often you can do it manually.

linuxhippy:
You don't need your router to do dynamic dns naming. Just setup a free account at www.no-ip.org. Then add a host and select an unused hostname. People from the outside can then access your home network/server using that hostname. To keep it current, click on downloads and get the software which runs in the background on your computer, notifying no-ip.org's DNS servers whenever your ip changes. Be sure to setup port-forwarding on your router, to forward incoming connections from the Internet to the appropriate server on your network.

Hope that helps. If you need more details let me know.

Going side with WindowBreaker to cast another vote for no-ip.com. I've used their service and Linux "dynamic update client" for exactly what you want to do.

I think the only other advice is to check your ISP's AUP or TOS. Residential providers can sometimes get a bit pissy about people running servers on their "home" lines - quite possibly as a method to sell "business" services for more $$$.

By the way, there's a project called Jinzora for streaming media over the net. I played around with it as a home media-server for a bit - it's pretty good.

I set up an account at no-ip and installed their software ok. Then I tried Jinzora, but couldn't install their online software install because firefox won't open their index.php file. I don't have KDE on this old pc, so Opera won't install either to open the php file. Is there some other way to install Jinzora than online?

IIRC (been a while since I used Jinzora), the first page you'd view (after unpacking it and configuring your web server) was install.php. I'll grab the latest version and see.

OK, d/ld and I was wrong - it should indeed be index.php. Do you have apache (assuming that's whats you're using) configured to show index.php by default?

Edit /etc/apache/httpd.conf and look for the directive "DirectoryIndex index.html" and simply add "index.php"

If you have neither working firefox nor opera, you can use lynx or links in console.

added index.php to /etc/apache/httpd.conf

Still shows unspaced giberish in firefox and lynx. Looks better in links, but doesn't install. What's the browser that apache uses? Maybe I need to install this php file with that?

I'm pretty sure you upload those files to your server and then open install.php from another box.

Apache is web server so its independent from web browser. You can access same page with internet explorer, links or firefox. Contents would be the same except in console browsers there is no graphics support. The problem is not in browser, it's in jinzora or apache configuration.

I guess it would be a good idea to ask linuxhippy how much he knows about apache before we go off the deep end.

Do you have the php package installed on your server?

I thought 501 posts was enough to know this.