[olug] linux web server management ?

Fri Dec 20 20:01:56 UTC 2002

Ok in bad form replying to myself and all I should mention that I'm 
talking about from a SERVER point of view. Not a desktop.

There's a big difference.

-- Daniel

On Friday, December 20, 2002, at 01:18 PM, Daniel Pfile wrote:

> Being a linux nut and all, I agree actually. You need to spend some 
> time with some systems locally before you go off trying to remote 
> manage a server. You should be familiar with deb, rpm, and stow. You 
> should be able to write shell scripts. You should know how processes 
> and disks work. You should know all the basic command line tools. 
> After you get to that level of exp you should know which distro you 
> prefer. Go through and learn where all the important files go, how log 
> rotation works, how the mta works, the init scripts, where you should 
> install stuff, etc.
>
> The same is true if you're going to run a windows server. Just because 
> it's point and click doesn't mean you shouldn't have a good idea of 
> the inner workings of your system. There are alot of things that you 
> have to do to keep an NT server running smoothly. Most of the time on 
> windows, IMO, it's harder to figure out what to do that in linux. At 
> least in linux there is a ton of information on the net. With windows 
> I'm lucky if I can find what I need after going through 3 books and 15 
> minutes on google.
>
> I'd like to learn how to rebuild car engines, but you can be sure I'll 
> take baby steps on engines I don't care about before I start on one I 
> do. Or worse, doing it for other people for money.
>
> -- Daniel
>
> On Wednesday, December 18, 2002, at 05:33 PM, Aaron W DeLashmutt wrote:
>
>> Not to start a big bashing fest or anything... but;
>> I think solutions such as apt get, urpmi, and portage are horrible 
>> ideas
>> for newbies.  Why are you even using linux in the first place if all 
>> you
>> are looking for is ease of use.  There is a such thing as EASY, its
>> called windows XP.
>> No problem being a noob, everyone has to start somewhere... but read 
>> the
>> docs, howtos, everything available.  Almost all information is
>> available, including dependencies.
>> You aren't going to learn anything using tools like apt-get except how
>> to bitch when you can't get something to work... or when a needed
>> 'debian package' isn't available.
>>
>> These are the reasons the acronym RTFM has become so widely known.
>>
>> -Aaron DeLashmutt
>>
>> ps.  After this email, Im going to get my warm fuzzy feeling using
>> 'Windows Update' to update my libraries and secure my box.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Brian Wiese [mailto:bwiese at cotse.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 4:08 PM
>> To: Aaron
>> Subject: Fw: Re: [olug] linux web server management ?
>>
>> hahahahah, yeah. my point Exactly!!!
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:29:18 -0600 (CST)
>> From: "William E. Kempf" <wekempf at cox.net>
>> To: <olug at olug.org>
>> Subject: Re: [olug] linux web server management ?
>>
>>
>>
>> Jonathan Warren said:
>>> With linux it is easy to install software.
>>
>> No, I'd have to disagree.
>>
>>>  You just need to copy the
>>> package or source files to the server and either install them with 
>>> the
>>> command line package tool or build them and install them.
>>
>> You forgot about dealing with dependencies here!
>>
>>>  For Redhat
>>> you would do the following rpm -i newpkg.rpm.  It will report any
>> errors
>>> or problems or missing packages.
>>
>> Yeah, now you get to track down the missing packages, repeat this
>> process,
>> track down the missing packages for those packages...
>>
>> And I've not even mentioned how difficult it can be to track down 
>> those
>> other dependencies, even with rpmfind.net.
>>
>>
>>>  Most source distributions can be
>>> installed by tar -zxvf source.tgz or tar -jxvf source.tar.bz2  cd
>> source
>>> ./configure
>>
>> And again, track down dependencies, repeat this process ad. nauseum.
>>
>>> make
>>> make install
>>
>> I get the feeling that some folks on here don't care for my 
>> criticizing
>> Linux, but the criticism is often warranted and can do nothing but
>> motivate people to find solutions to the problems.  In this case, 
>> there
>> are few solutions available.  Debian has apt.  Gentoo has portage.
>> Mandrake has urpmi.  There's a port of apt for RPM based distros
>> (apt-rpm)
>> which may help, provided you can find a good apt-rpm based repository
>> for
>> your distro (the only one I could find was for RedHat).
>>
>> Since switching to Mandrake and using urpmi I find installations to be
>> MUCH easier.  The only problem is that, once installed, most packages
>> require some configuration as well, and said configurations are often
>> arcane and difficult to learn.  The end result has been that most
>> installations for me still take most of a full day (some even longer,
>> unfortunately).  At least once I've learned how to deal with a package
>> I've got the knowledge and notes to repeat the installation in a 
>> matter
>> of
>> minutes... but the point is that things don't have to be this 
>> difficult
>> for "newbies" (and I mean newbies to a given package, not newbies to
>> Linux... though the latter confounds the problems).  This is one area
>> that
>> I think the Linux world really needs to start focusing their 
>> attention.
>>
>> William E. Kempf
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>   Brian Wiese | bwiese at cotse.com | aim: unolinuxguru
>> ------------------------------------------------------
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