[olug] linux web server management ?

[Daniel Pfile]

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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