Submitted by This article shows how to install a LAMP system with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS from the perspective of an absolute newbie. It was written with hopes of aiding other Linux newbies on the steps necessary to create such a basic Linux, Apache2, MySQL5 and PHP5 system with FTP.
The tutorial looks pretty nice, but why installing the whole ubuntu-desktop to use webmin?
And I think a couple of hints on how to secure your machine after offering services would have been a good idea.
Nice touch the router configuration though. Most newbies would have had a tough time figuring that out.
This is a problem… I am a firm believer that not everyone should be able to do everything with computers. If you can’t figure out some tasks on your own (like how to set up a working server), then you probably don’t have the baseline computer skills to do them safely and securely given a tutorial. Setting up a web-facing server is exactly one of these situations.
Well with freedom comes responsibility, right? I’m a firm believer in having the freedom to make mistakes in life. Yes if someone who has never worked with Apache exposed on the public Internet sets this up, they are likely an easy target for hackers. Ths guide makes no warning of this and in that regard it is a total and complete failure and should be removed from howtoforge.com
Also the article is incorrect in saying that you can update DNS to forward traffic to a different port. DNS doesn’t specify anything about ports, only ip address and host names.
Have you ever heard of iptables? You can redirect ports with iptables agnostic of the service. (from memory), something similar to this might work:
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p udp –dport 53 -j REDIRECT –to-port 153
That would redirect udp port 53 (DNS) to port 153.
“DNS doesn’t specify anything about ports, only ip address and host names.”
Yes it does, but… only with SRV type requests. These requests ask the IP address and the associated port for a given service. For instance, “tell me the SIP proxy address and its port for the given domain”.
However, and it is where you are right, this type of request is not used to access web servers, where it is just a classical name resolution, and not a “service resolution”.
C’mon. Setting one up is the perfect way to learn.
“This is a problem…”
Incorrect. Everybody should be able to do everything with a computer. How else are they supposed to learn? Just because somebody can’t figure out how to set up a LAMP server or whatever on their own by no means suggests that they should never set up a LAMP server.
Nobody here learned everthing they know on their own. Somebody somwhere tought you something. Maybe even a thing or two about computers.
And guess what? This is how people learn. Will following this tutorial give you a hardnened LAMP stack ready for the business? Probably not, better read some of the documentation. But hey, for many purposes it would be great (like for learning).
My mom isn’t the most tech savvy person. If she were to try to set up a LAMP server, it would be a bit of a disaster. However, there is absolutely no reason she shouldn’t try should she wish to.
You might just tell people to RTFM and to stop bothering you but I say let the Newbies learn something otherwise they will always be Newbies.
Edited 2006-07-31 17:42
As mentioned above, there is no mention of security, he installs ubuntu-desktop (gnome, Kitchen sink, indoor plumbing, etc) to configure his server.
What I’m looking for, and it’s not completely evident to me is what happens when I choose “Install a LAMP Server” from the menu.
I’m looking to setup the LAMP server + Courier and egroupware (I prefer to use packages that are in the ubuntu repositories, and phpgroupware just won’t cut it) on my Intranet.
I’ve seen the “Perfect Ubuntu 6.06 ISP Setup” artcles, but I want to go from the “Certified LAMP Server” approach. Anyone have any thoughts on this, or will I have to stumble/bumble through it myself?
This setup would be useful for a development workstation and not directly facing the internet.