Q: I use Gentoo Linux on an old machine at home PII-450/256MB RAM. It is both a personal LAN file server (SAMBA) and a web server (Apache). The web host small, personal things, not as my main photography website is maintained by Telnap. Sometime soon I will build a new main gear, give my old truck to my dad, and then take his current rig, a PIII-866/512MB machine and use it as a server instead of the PII-450 machine. If I do this, I must return to Gentoo, tampering with another Linux distro, or play with Windows XP SP2 with IIS installed? I do not know too much about IIS, but I can at least the same amount as Samba and Apache to do. My guess is that a Windows machine is still much more fragile than a machine that the latest release of Gentoo patched with all the correct holes.
Thoughts, opinions, comments?
Best Answer: It is possible to install IIS on Windows XP Home but it is not easy. You need the installation disk for Windows 2000 Pro. From there its a bunch of steps. So, a free way of getting IIS on XP Home is kinda difficult. The next best way to get IIS on your PC is to upgrade to Windows XP Pro. This is a much better OS anyway. You can still purchase OEM copies for about $100. Better hurry before they stop selling them.
If that is not possible, then Apache with the ASP module is certainly an inexpensive way to get a web server installed. It is fairly straight forward but it can be a little difficult. There are many sites with Apache info. There is also a new Mono Apache module. It is designed to serve .Net 2.0 web services.
The other way is to not install it at all on your PC and to get an inexpensive web hosting plan for .Net. Some are as low as $5 a month. You can Develop on Dreamweaver and deploy it via FTP to the webserver and test it that way. It works pretty well.
If you are planning on doing ASP .NET you should also download the free Visual Studios from Microsoft. They are excellent for developing .NET code.
I work with Dreamweaver all day but I develop it for ColdFusion, JavaScript, XML and XSLT. For .NET, we all use Visual Studio.
Hope this helps.
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Re:Decide what technologies you want enabled first. No use installing linux if you want to run asp.net/SQL Server.
Setting Up A Web Server.
Re:If you're really going to try Debian make sure you grab an install disc from http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ and install sarge.
As for that SATA controller, I don't personally have one but it looks like it's supported by the sata_sil driver.
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Re:Okay, I will give Debian a try. But I am still concerned about compatibility/driver support with this SATA RAID solution (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-124-020&depa=0).
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Re:I do the exactly same thing you do. What I found to be an excellent easy to use solution was Libranet 2.81.
It is a very easy to intall debian distro. I'm a relative newb, and I had everything running including apache with mysql/php all chugging along in a mere 5 hours (including a long painful install on a pentium II 266 – which of course is no libranet's fault.). . .
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Re:For my purposes, Gentoo has been relatively painless. No one here is a fan of Emerge? Are there any other distros that know how to update themselves so well?
emerge is slow, written in python and doesn't do dependency checking on removal. I could probably come up with more shortcomings but that's the quick list. Debian is lightyears ahead of Gentoo in package quality and management.
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Re:Originally posted by: guy
For my purposes, Gentoo has been relatively painless. No one here is a fan of Emerge? Are there any other distros that know how to update themselves so well?
Debian does it better.
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Re:OpenBSD has a better ports system.
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Re:For my purposes, Gentoo has been relatively painless. No one here is a fan of Emerge? Are there any other distros that know how to update themselves so well?
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Re:Maybe you would want to run Apache on Windows. Then you can run your fileserver without SAMBA.
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Re:As much as I like Linux I wouldn't run Gentoo unless I absolutely had to.
Debian.
Re:linux will always have an edge over windows in the security arena but so long as your not advertising your server, run your server behind a decent hardware firewall/router with security enabled, you should be ok, and running windows I'd say a good 90% of the time is a lot easier to install stuff/update patches/check on logs than linux is.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Gentoo + Apache > WinXP + IIS
Stick with Linux unless you have some windows specific apps you want to run.
:thumbsup:
No I don't. But Gentoo seems like it takes a lot longer to get running…
I am thinking about installing an SATA RAID PCI card, and I wonder if Gentoo will have the right drivers for it.
Let's say I am running two 200GB harddrives in RAID 0, creating a 400GB drive. Let's say the goal was to run both a web and file server. Would it make sense to create at least two partitions, one for the web server, and one for the file server. Or does it not make a difference in Gentoo?
Re:Windows XP only allows 10 concurrent sessions. Those sessions can fill up with anywhere from 2 – 10 people connected, so I wouldn't bother with windows. Try ubuntu.
"My guess is that such a Windows machine is still far more vulnerable than a machine running the latest release of Gentoo with all right holes patched."
Both OS's are only as secure as their administrator is.
Re:Gentoo + Apache > WinXP + IIS
Stick with Linux unless you have some windows specific apps you want to run.
:thumbsup:
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