Home server

[mouse]

I am new to Linux, but I have just installed SuSE 10 64bit and would like to setup a home server to host my website and email etc.

My ISP is a dynamic IP and my router/firewall is a Netgear DG/wireless.

What information is out there for me to do this, or is this kind of project out of my reach as a newbie? Also, how would I get my site viewed by the net users, I do have my own domain name hosted by a company, so would I need to get this changed?

Thank you.

[dylunio]

I'll try and give ou a few pointers for this.

I know nothing about mail servers so I'll just comment on the Webserver.

Install Apache, which should be in YaST. It should make the 'Document Root' (the directory where your website goes) something link /srv/www/htdocs - but check the apache config file (/etc/apache2/apache2.conf in SuSE iirc).

You'll have to open port 80 for the webserver, as well as forward port 80 from the router to your server.
To do this check in YaST that the firewall has port 80 open.
Then open up a web browser and type the IP address of your router in the address bar - this should (with any luck) take you to the config of your router , where you should forwart port 80 to the internal IP of your server.

To let others see your website they can: type in your IP address -- but this can change since your on a dynamic IP. So you could go someware like www.dyndns.org who, for free will operate the DNS for your system, and they give out (sub)domains such as foo.homelinux.org etc. Dyndns supply small programs that update your IP on there system so that it's always reachable.

Or you can get whoever controles the DNS of your current domain to point at you IP.

I hope this helps a bit.

[mouse]

That sounds great, I'll give it a go and check out DynDNS. Many thanks for the info.

[michael56]

I... I do have my own domain name hosted by a company, so would I need to get this changed?

If you want to use your domain instead of one of the free subdomains that dyndns.org provides, you'll want to check their Custom DNS service. With DNS support you can then provide the nameservers to the company hosting your domain, and yourdomain.com will route to your IP. (Other companies also provide DNS service -- I just happen to use dyndns.org.) You'll still need to update the IP address with dyndns.org whenever it changes either manually using a web interface, or by downloading a program (as the previous poster mentioned). Also some routers have this function built in -- I was surprised to find it in mine.

For your mail server, you need to install and configure sendmail or equivalent SMTP server. (I'm not sure how to do it on SuSe - I use Slackware.) Then open port 25 on your firewall and router. To route traffic to your box, you'll need to create something called a Mail Exchanger (MX) record for your domain. If you use a service like Custom DNS you can create the record as part of that service. This lets you have mail accounts such as bob@yourdomain.com simply by defining user "bob" on your linux box.

Note that some ISPs reject emails originating from dynamic IPs (not sure how they know this). so it's possible that some email you send in this way might be rejected. (I think I've gotten rejection notices from AOL, for example.) I'm sure there are ways around it, but I haven't had time to follow up.

Hope this helps... I set this up as a Linux newbie too and it was a real hoot when it all worked...

[sharkyro]

What information is out there for me to do this, or is this kind of project out of my reach as a newbie?

That is by no means out of your reach. Congratz for your ambition and for the will to learn.

Also, how would I get my site viewed by the net users, I do have my own domain name hosted by a company, so would I need to get this changed?

You have 3 options:
1. they type the IP address in the browser;
2. you don't need to get a different domain but you need to talk to the company that hosts that domain to correctly redirect http requests for your new site;
3. you get a different domain for the new site.

Good luck!

[mouse]

That is by no means out of your reach. Congratz for your ambition and for the will to learn.

Thanks guys for vote of confidence and excellent advice. I will give this a go and post here if I get any problems.

Many thanks.
Mouse.