How to setup domain name for my Ubuntu Webserver

[uraknai]

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Hi,

I have setup a LAMP webserver using Ubuntu Server that I can access from any computer connected on the same network simply by typing the webserver's ip address in the browser address bar. What I need it to be able to access this website from the internet by a domain name.

I've no experience setting up this kind of thing so don't know where to begin. Could someone please give me a hand and point me in the right direction.

Cheers,

Nick

[coopstah13]

well, i hope you have a static ip, otherwise you'll need to look into something like dydns, the basic idea is you register a domain name using a website that sells them to you, and then you have to register in the dns server that the domain name points to the IP address of your ubuntu server, it takes a while to propogate to all the dns servers, 24-48 hours I think

[elija]

You have a few methods.

1. As coopstah13 says; if this is a live server (ie serving to the outside world) then you will need to register a domain and point the ip address at the server using the nameservers.

The next two are for internal (serving only the network) servers.

2. Update the hosts file on each machine. In Ubuntu this can be found in /etc/hosts which should tell you that you need root priviledges to edit it.
On each computer including the server add an entry that identifies your webserver. The basic hosts file comes with some entries already in it so you can see what they look like. For this method you should give the server a static IP Address otherwise you could end up changing the hosts files all the time.

If you have Windows clients, the hosts file can be found at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

3. Install a DNS Server; Again the server should have a static IP address. Once it is configured make sure all the clients have that server in their list of dns servers. This is the most complicated way and I am not going to discuss it here.

To give you a headstart Google for installing and configuring bind dns on Ubuntu.

[uraknai]

Thanks for your replies guys.

What I need is to allow access to the server from the outside world. If I type the servers ip address (10.122.164.6) into the browser address bar of a networked PC it connects and shows my website. If I do the same on a computer not on the same network it doesn't connect. What I need is to know how to 'open' this server to the outside world so any computer connected to the internet can access it via ip address and then I can point a domiain name to this ip address.

Cheers

[elija]

First of all I assume you have some kind of router/firewall on your internet connection. I can't be too specific on this as they all do things slightly differently but what you would need to do is enable port forwarding and send port 80 to the internal IP of the server. They usually have a fairly straight forward web interface for handling this.

Then in your browser navigate to the ip address of your internet connection (assigned by your isp) and your router should forward the request on to the server.

If that works, set up a dynamic dns to your exernal IP and then test that.

Hope this helps a bit

[coopstah13]

10.*.*.* are reserved for private network addresses, you can never directly access one of those IP from outside of the network

In order to do this, like elija said you would need to have admin access to your gateway/router and be able to forward port 80 requests to the internal machine.