| The material on this page was prepared using Lenny which only includes Apache 2.2. For our page which covers configuring Apache 1.3 on Etch or Sarge, click here. |
While Linux/UNIX can be used as a workstation OS it's real power shows itself when used as a server. The lean structure of Debian allows even an old Pentium III system to operate as a server. And the fact that Web (Apache) and e-mail (Sendmail) server applications are free and included with Debian, once you've set up a Debian system all you have to do is install the Apache and Sendmail packages and you're in business.
On this page we'll show you how to set up the two most common types of Internet servers. A server running Apache to act as an external (Internet) or internal (Intranet) Web Server, and an e-mail server running Sendmail which is the most widely used e-mail server software on the Internet. Note that this is not an either/or proposition. You can run Web and e-mail server services simultaneously on the same system.
It's not really accurate to categorize Web and e-mail servers as "Internet servers". Web servers are often used for internal intranet sites and most organizations have internal mail servers so that co-workers can e-mail each other. So while these servers could also be categorized as "LAN servers", we have them on this page because they are the two most common types of Internet servers.Setting up the Web and e-mail servers is only half of it. Without DNS services no one will be able to get to them. On the DNS page we showed you how to set up DNS services using either your own server or a third-party, including the free dynamic DNS service that you can use for home and test servers.
If you want to set up a serious Web server you'll want some kind of scripting capability. The Apache install sets up CGI (Common Gateway Interface) automatically. With CGI the code that gets executed are stored in separate files on the server in a cgi-bindirectory. With CGI you can run plain-text scripts that get compiled into an executable each time they are run, such as with Perl scripts, or they can be pre-compiled executables written in a language like C. The big advantage of CGI scripts is that, because they're stored in individual files, there are literally thousands of free CGI scripts available on the Internet that you can download and use on your Web sites. You don't have to learn how to program in a given scripting language to take advantage of scripts. For more information on CGI and Perl, see our CGI/Perl tutorial page.
Another approach to Web scripting is to embed the script code in the HTML documents. This is the approach taken with PHP, Microsoft's ASP, and ColdFusion and you have to learn how to program in these languages to use them. (When you're surfing the Web you'll often see Web pages in your browser's location line with extensions like .php, .asp, and .cfm which indicates the pages were written with this scripting approach.) The Web server parses pages with these extensions, picks out the embedded script code, and executes the script code before sending the page to the browser. Any results of the script execution are displayed in the page at the same location the script code is located in the HTML document. This scripting approach is the desired approach for Web developers who wish to have their Web pages access back-end databases.
Installing Apache on a system and not having associating with a domain name can also be valuable. Such a system can serve as a development or test platform when you're writing new Web pages so you're not testing out new pages on your production Web server.
Courtesy of
:
Keith Parkansky
http://www.aboutdebian.com/internet.htm
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