Puppy-based website server is easy - only lacks mail server.

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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Nathan F
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Puppy-based website server is easy - only lacks mail server.

#1 Post by Nathan F »

I'm currently hosting my own website using Puppy and the Monkey webserver. If was ridiculously easy to set it up, compared with any of the other alternatives I could come up with. With Puppy, we also have dhttpd and a neet little ftp server available. I even built the site using Mozilla and Amaya. This distro rocks. The only thing I'm missing now is a mail server. I think that would be a great option, via pupget or a dotpup. I'd like to say I'll make the dotpup, but I'm not that smart yet. Soooooo......... calling on the smarter pups to implement this for me.

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

Would you mind posting a step-by-step description of how you did it, for beginners and also more experienced people, who might pick up something they hadn't thought of? Thanks. :)

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papaschtroumpf
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#3 Post by papaschtroumpf »

what's the FTP server on puppy? I don't remember seeing it in the default 1.0.3 liveCD. Is it an add-on pupget?
Does it allow puts? (uploading files?)

if samba fails for whatever reason on a particualr network, this could be usd for exchanging files with windows machines since htey can act as an ftp client.

(sorry to sort of hijack your thread)
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BarryK
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#4 Post by BarryK »

Yes, Nathan, a howto would be great!

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Nathan F
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#5 Post by Nathan F »

Ok, I get the point. I should be a good citizen and give details. First to answer the ftp question, gtkftpd is available via pupget. I don't use it right now, but I'm sure someone here does if you're really curious. Now I should mention that I got Monkey working with the assistance of guest too. Right now you have two options in Puppy for serving up html. You can use nullhttpd, which is included in the distro and is there for use with quisp. this is probably the easier way. All you need to do is go to ~/ghttpd/htdocs and replace the provided index with yours and add any other pages or docs you want to serve. Then, in ~/ghttpd click on the icon for httpd and it will start the daemon. you shouldn't even need to change anything in the configuration file, it will already listen to any IP address on port 80. Personally, I wanted something a little more controllable. Monkey is available as a dotpup made by guest too. I'll post how I configured everything a little later today, as my wife is staring daggers at me for being on the computer again.

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Nathan F
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Monkey as thin server

#6 Post by Nathan F »

Here's my configuration, but first, a bit of theory. Basically, I believe that any server has the potential to be compromised, so instead of fighting it, I want to make it irrelevent. If you run Puppy live CD, it looks for pup001 at bootup. All pups probably know this. What I've done is gotten it and everything else configured, then backed up this file onto another disk. Periodically I reboot into another OS, wipe out the current pup001 file and replace it with my "clean" version. Then I reboot, and it's back to my original everything. If anyone DOES compromise my machine they are now gone. This probably isn't neccessary but I'm just paranoid.

Now monkey is a dotpup and installs just like any other dotpup. Once installed goto ~/my-roxapps and click the Icon to start it. It will then create a new directory ~/monkey,where all of the important files are kept including the main config file. Before going here I recomend you go back to my-roxapps and right click/look inside the monkey icon. Open up help and view the readme files, so you get some idea what you're doing.

Now, default is set to listen to port 51234. If you want to run Monkey on another port you have to edit the appropriate line in the config file AND you will have to initiate monkey as root. In order to do that go back to ~my roxapps right click/look inside monkey. Right click/open as text AppRun. Go down until you find a lin that says su -c $SM nobody &. This line tells monkey to start as user"nobody". To run it as root, chance the line to $SM$. This will now let monkey start as root. You should also change MONKEY_URL to open either your own IP address and port 80 or you can substitute your own domain name.

Now you have to edit a couple lines in the config file. Go to ~/monkey/conf and open the config file. Change the port to 80, change the server name to either your own IP or preferably your own domain. Place your pages in ~/monkey/public_html. Uncomment the line that says User nobody. The reason for this is that once the proccess has started, it will then switch from running as a proccess of ROOT to running as a process of nobody. This is a safer configuration and close to how Apache is usually started and run. You can now restart the daemon from the icon in my-roxapps. I dragged this icon to my desktop for convenience along with the directory containing the logs. If this sound like a lot of work, try running Apache with a Debian install.

You should now have a running server provided you've registered with and properly setup DNS. I won't go into that here, as it's not a strictly Puppy subject and you can find that info elsewhere.

I'm a photographer. To see the site I'm running with this setup go to http://www.texasangel.biz. Enjoy!
Last edited by Nathan F on Sat 09 Jul 2005, 23:19, edited 2 times in total.

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papaschtroumpf
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#7 Post by papaschtroumpf »

purty pictures but the link doesn't work, I had to type it inmy browser.
Maybe you could click a few original desktop background pics for the next puppy release.
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Nathan F
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#8 Post by Nathan F »

Thanks for the compliment. I don't know why the link doesn't work, but I guess it doesn't matter. I'm not trying to advertise here.

Still waiting on that mailserver idea.

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