Advice on building web server

[satimis]

Hi folks,

I'm planning to build a web server on following PC;

CPU Athlon 64 3000+
RAM 1024M
HD SATA II 160G
OS Ubuntu on the server
http://www.ubuntu.com/server

Please advise what will be the best arrangement on the size of each of following partitions;

/dev/sda1 /boot
/dev/sda2 /
/dev/vg/home
/dev/vg/usr
/dev/vg/var
/dev/vg/tmp
/dev/sda4 swap

Any suggestion on above LVM order? In following order?
/usr
/home
/var
/tmp

Is "Ubuntu on the server" easy to configure?


Apache, MySQL and PHP come with "Ubuntu on the server" as default. What will be your opinion on MySQL vs PostgreSQL?


If allowing visitors sending webmail direct on the server what package will you recommend.

TIA


B.R.
satimis

[Roxoff]

The layout of your partitions really depends on how you are going to apply your website, e.g. whether there will be multiple websites, or whether you'll let your users have their own web space.

If users need space, put the bulk of your disk space into /home, if you need it for the main web servers, then put it where the server root directory is going to be located (/var/www or whereever you plan on putting it).

Ubuntu on the server should be as easy to configure as any other Linux server system. There are several alternatives to this, CentOS, SLES (I believe there's a community version of this), Debian, etc.

You should familiarise yourself with MySQL and PostgreSQL yourself before deciding between them. They're both capable and reliable, I suspect that the decision between them from your perspective will be which is the nicest to use or administrate (in your own opinion - hence my suggestion that you try them both before deciding. Remember this isn't a commercial world, both these packages are available without cost, so trying them is easy).

If you want webmail, you want Squirrelmail. It rocks. You could do webmail with Suse's OpenExchange - but that's quite an expensive option.

[satimis]

Hi Roxoff,

Tks for your advice.

This is only test to gain experience building webserver. I never built it before.

The layout of your partitions really depends on how you are going to apply your website, e.g. whether there will be multiple websites, or whether you'll let your users have their own web space.

If users need space, put the bulk of your disk space into /home, if you need it for the main web servers, then put it where the server root directory is going to be located (/var/www or whereever you plan on putting it).

If I understand your advice correctly, to allow users have their own web space I need to assign more size for /home?

Ubuntu on the server should be as easy to configure as any other Linux server system. There are several alternatives to this, CentOS, SLES (I believe there's a community version of this), Debian, etc.

On first round I'll build "Ubuntu on the server". I suppose it is easy to configure. On second round I'll run other OS specific for server. I heard CentOS before strong for server. I have no knownledge on SLES.

You should familiarise yourself with MySQL and PostgreSQL yourself before deciding between them. They're both capable and reliable, I suspect that the decision between them from your perspective will be which is the nicest to use or administrate

I have no experience on both of them. What I expect is easy to configure on my first round.

Others noted with tks.


B.R.
satimis

[Roxoff]

Hi Roxoff,

Tks for your advice.

This is only test to gain experience building webserver. I never built it before.

That's great news - it wont matter if you do it wrong, and you'll learn more by making mistakes.

If I understand your advice correctly, to allow users have their own web space I need to assign more size for /home?

While that isn't strictly true in all cases, you're pretty much right. If you want to let your users have URL's of the form: www.example.com/~user, then this is normally placed in ~/user/public_html, so the space would be needed in /home. You can put it elsewhere, though, as you're in control of the system.

Also, if you're using virtual hosts, you can give them addresses like 'user.example.com' which might suit them better (provided there aren't lots of these - a few is easy to administrate, a few hundred is impossible.

On first round I'll build "Ubuntu on the server". I suppose it is easy to configure. On second round I'll run other OS specific for server. I heard CentOS before strong for server. I have no knownledge on SLES.

I wasn't trying to turn you away from Ubuntu - I was just pointing out (largely for other readers) that alternatives to this distro exist. If you're happy with Ubuntu, then stick with it. At the heart of it all is the Linux kernel, and that's pretty similar whatever the distro. You'll be clamping down stuff on the box that's not in use later anyway - so you wont even want many of the nice toys the distro gives.

I have no experience on both of them. What I expect is easy to configure on my first round.

You have an adventure coming then.

Others noted with tks.


B.R.
satimis

yvw.