brady474747
2005-03-21, 22:38 PM
Not much chat in the debian forum, not a popular choice I guess.
I just started experimenting on a server beach debian server and all I can say is apt-get is GREAT. I swear you could almost setup your whole server with one long apt-get install command line.
Some other thoughts on sb debian servers:
It seems daunting at first, especially since the debian servers come with nothing but webmin and ssh and there are no, and I mean none, servers installed, but as long as you can ssh, it doesn't take long to get up and running with whatever you want.
Really, if you were going to do something specific with a sb server besides serve web pages, the debian server would be ideal since you could have just what you needed on there and nothing else.
once you get your web,mail, and db servers of choice(yes you can use whatever, it doesn't have to be exim and cppop and cpimap) setup it is really easy to make a simple script to manage your virtual hosting, especially if you are using mysql for mail, authentication, and ftp backend. A few lines of php to insert a few db records and another site is setup.
The addition of fantastico at sb was pretty cool, but I was amazed to see that there are debian packages for many of the same web apps(squirrelmail,phpbb2,wordpress, gallery, etc) One apt-get install phpbBB2 and phpbb is installed on your server in usr/share/whatever and you can alias a directory in every site to it if you want with a simple change in your virtual host directive in httpd.conf. I am pretty sure fantatsico keeps a file repository, but when you install one of their packages it copies all of the files to that site's document root.
Needless to say, I am not missing cpanel/redhat/rpm yet at all, really it is one less thing to break(and my old cpanel did seem to flake on some updates sometimes). If you use the webmin that comes with the server, it can even do some cool things that cpanel does not. First, the java file manager kicks cpanel file manager's ass. I don't use it much, but sometimes for quick script tweaks having an edit window open through the file manager makes it much easier and faster or for the occasional mass file move around(ie restructuring some picture gallery directories) it is great to have the visual and the multiple select and copy and paste vs ls and cp and mv. To me, the backup, log file manipulations and rotations, iptables, and various hardware modules of webmin are superior to cpanel as well.
I also tried webmin's virtualmin system for vhosting management and setup and it worked great, but I didn't like the fact that every email address required a unix user so I went the mysql backend way, a good bit of manual editing, but once it is setup, it is a breeze. I'd like to make a webmin module for how I am setup, but the perl required looks a little intense for me, maybe someday though.
I guess if you have many resellers and all that cpanel or some other control panel could help you keep a handle on it, but I am way small-time and this works for me. I guess I am encouraging others who might be scared to try. You will learn a lot and save some money every month. With cpanel I felt like I was "the man", but in the negative, strict, arbitrarily authoritarion and oppressive sense, but with debian I feel like "the man" in the cool, free, and easy sense :) As always, ymmv
I just started experimenting on a server beach debian server and all I can say is apt-get is GREAT. I swear you could almost setup your whole server with one long apt-get install command line.
Some other thoughts on sb debian servers:
It seems daunting at first, especially since the debian servers come with nothing but webmin and ssh and there are no, and I mean none, servers installed, but as long as you can ssh, it doesn't take long to get up and running with whatever you want.
Really, if you were going to do something specific with a sb server besides serve web pages, the debian server would be ideal since you could have just what you needed on there and nothing else.
once you get your web,mail, and db servers of choice(yes you can use whatever, it doesn't have to be exim and cppop and cpimap) setup it is really easy to make a simple script to manage your virtual hosting, especially if you are using mysql for mail, authentication, and ftp backend. A few lines of php to insert a few db records and another site is setup.
The addition of fantastico at sb was pretty cool, but I was amazed to see that there are debian packages for many of the same web apps(squirrelmail,phpbb2,wordpress, gallery, etc) One apt-get install phpbBB2 and phpbb is installed on your server in usr/share/whatever and you can alias a directory in every site to it if you want with a simple change in your virtual host directive in httpd.conf. I am pretty sure fantatsico keeps a file repository, but when you install one of their packages it copies all of the files to that site's document root.
Needless to say, I am not missing cpanel/redhat/rpm yet at all, really it is one less thing to break(and my old cpanel did seem to flake on some updates sometimes). If you use the webmin that comes with the server, it can even do some cool things that cpanel does not. First, the java file manager kicks cpanel file manager's ass. I don't use it much, but sometimes for quick script tweaks having an edit window open through the file manager makes it much easier and faster or for the occasional mass file move around(ie restructuring some picture gallery directories) it is great to have the visual and the multiple select and copy and paste vs ls and cp and mv. To me, the backup, log file manipulations and rotations, iptables, and various hardware modules of webmin are superior to cpanel as well.
I also tried webmin's virtualmin system for vhosting management and setup and it worked great, but I didn't like the fact that every email address required a unix user so I went the mysql backend way, a good bit of manual editing, but once it is setup, it is a breeze. I'd like to make a webmin module for how I am setup, but the perl required looks a little intense for me, maybe someday though.
I guess if you have many resellers and all that cpanel or some other control panel could help you keep a handle on it, but I am way small-time and this works for me. I guess I am encouraging others who might be scared to try. You will learn a lot and save some money every month. With cpanel I felt like I was "the man", but in the negative, strict, arbitrarily authoritarion and oppressive sense, but with debian I feel like "the man" in the cool, free, and easy sense :) As always, ymmv