Simple Apache Question from newbe

[zumie]

We just added a new computer to our network and I want to run Linux on it. The other comps. are xp Pro's., and w2k servers. We develop web sites and I want to be able to test sites that will be hosted on Apache boxes with an Apache server.

I'm thinking of installing Debian on the new machine then installing Apache. Would I be able to name our w2k server win/localhost and also use Linux/localhost on the Linux box and be able to test sites on either server?

Thanks in advance.
Zumie

Zumie



Visualize whorld peas.

 

[RhythmAce]

All machines like to call themselves localhost but not other machines. This setup would work if you only had one site on each machine. You would access the site by using the hostname of the machine it is on. It sounds like what you want to do is have many sites on each server and be able to type testsite1 or testsite2 in a browser and have it go to the right place. In the real world, this is done with dns servers. Wouldn't it be great if you had your own dns server? Well thank your lucky stars. Most distros of linux come with a dns server called bind. You would setup your webservers to use name based virtual hosting. Then you would setup bind to assign names to the ip of the host it is on. Now just add the ip of the linux box to the list of dns servers on each machine. You should be able to access any site from any machine on your intranet as long as they can find your dns server.