What Linux flavour should I use??? 4

[Hondy]

Hi

I want to run a commercial grade PHP web server, what Linux type should I get? I have very basic Linux skills but am very comfortable with the Windows equivalents and am aware of hosting risks.

I don't mind paying for it but it needs the following features installing and criteria:

*** must run on an HP DL 360 G5

*** Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP... so a LAMP would be ideal if this exists in all types of Linux.

*** My Linux skills aren't so good so a version that is easy to patch those LAMP security holes up with

*** packages should be easy to install (GD library etc)

*** is there such a thing as an RDP equivalent? (i'm not talking VNC, etc but session based non-console)

*** I will NOT be recompiling any kernals (i don't think???)

*** I'd also like to be able to clone it without it crashing horribly when I re-clone.

*** prefereably one with a GUI to manage the web service bindings etc.

Is there an obvious installation I should be looking at?

Thanks for taking the time - any other suggestions welcome.

Tall order or stick to Windows?

Cheers!

 

[thedaver]

Can we cut the holy war short? Please don't feed the trolls.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[Hondy]

hehe

well, i'm swaying towards Ubuntu with perhaps centos or debian next.

Valuable research this, thanks very much guys!

If anyone has any good security resources for LAMP set ups i'd be grateful. Security is the thing that concerns me at this point, I know how to harden Windows servers but Linux is a different ball game!

Cheers!

 

[smah]

Howto forge has some nice tutorials like

http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies

 

[donb01]

Of course I just have to throw in my 0.02 on the Windows vs Linux conversation, although I will avoid bashing and will instead focus on what appears to be my own stupidity.

I have unix and xenix experience going back to the 80's, although I don't consider myself an expert by any means. I also have windows experience moving forward from 3.0 and don't consider myself an expert there either although I can hold my own quite well.

Let me prefix my comments by saying that I don't have mission critical data on my server, so I'm not anal retentive about backup and redundancy - I have a couple of SQL databases that have calendar data in them and I just ftp them off the server once a week. I do have battery backup though. I have been running the current server on a consumer tower since 2001. Having said all that, I AM in the process of building a new server using a "real" server box with RAID and backup and all that good stuff, but more because I'm getting too lazy to have to rebuild it if I lose a drive or something.....

So anyway - when I decided to start paying with websites and servers and stuff in 2000 I was clueless. I found a copy of mandrake 6 (linux) in some bookstore for like $20 and built a server off that with and old PC I had laying around so I could learn it. Install and setup was menu driven so it was pretty easy, and if I missed anything along the way (forgetting to choose ftp, bind, apache, etc packages) there was another menu utility to install whatever I needed. I ran that for about a year until I decided I was ready to build something for real, and in 2001 I built off Mandrake 8 on my current box. It took me about 4 hours to set it up and get it the way I wanted it. I ran 3 virtual domains off that for 4 years and then blew a hard drive. I ran to OfficeMax, grabbed a drive, downloaded Mandrake 10 and upgraded the whole thing and republished all my stuff in 5 hours (I had backups of all my config files, DNS zones, etc on a disk). It has been running since then without a hitch, and I believe my system uptime right now is over 600 days.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine who decided that since I only spent $1500 to build my server, with OS, all software, etc, the whole thing was a joke, decided he was going to buy a "real" server and he was going to run Windows Server 2003 on there. So by the time he was done he dropped maybe $6 grand on the whole thing and it arrived - Windows was preloaded. So he messed around with it a couple of weeks and then decided that since I'd been doing server stuff for 5 years or so he would ask me to help set it up. I spent about a month on it and the webserver settings and DNS setup stuff was so convoluted that I couldn't figure it out - just when I would get the webserver working then the E-mail would bounce, etc, and I don't think he ever did get his own DNS running - he's using some service on the web somewhere... he ended up paying someone on top of his $6 grand to make it all work. Since that time I have been doing some light server admin on Win 2K3 for adding users, exchange mailboxes, etc, but still won't get near the web stuff - Not to mention he's rebooting the thing at least once a month when the MS updates come down, and sometimes just because it all quits working and he doesn't know why.

I always contrast that whole experience to the fact that I can build a linux LAMP server in my sleep in a few hours, and the things just sit there and run forever unless you reboot them for some strange reason or the power fails and your UPS runs out of juice....

Now I said all that and didn't bash anything )

As far as distros, I like Ubuntu and Mandriva. I'm building my new server on Mandriva, but primarily because I can reuse all my existing config files, and Ubuntu has some of the config stuff in different places and I didn't want to have to get used to looking in different places.

 

[Hondy]

ah you see, well I'll end up paying someone to sort out my linux server once it is broke and "/sbin/shutdown -r now" doesn't work.

I've found my Windows DNS / mail / etc to work fine, I guess it depends what you are used to.

One point you made is very true about the windows update reboots, that is pretty bad. But on the other hand I can you click on "update" in Linux to fix critical OS/package vulnerabilities? I hope so otherwise I wouldn't know where to start in identifying what components are installed and are vulnerable. How do you know? Do you have to read Linux security sites daily scouring for possible problems or is it as simple as "update"? (serious question!)

 

[lgarner]

Unix and Linux are better than Windows as far as rebooting after updates, but sometimes it's required. A rule of thumb is that an update to running software requires it to be restarted. If that's the kernel, it means a full reboot. Otherwise, just restarting the affected services should suffice.

There are generally forums and mailing lists for your OS that you can keep an eye on, as well as third-party lists to give you a heads-up.

Distributions provide update mechanisms for their software. Up2date (RH), Yum (CentOS) and Apt (Debian) come to mind. If you install other software, then you'll have to keep track of that yourself.