How To Setup A Linux Web Server

As many 'how to' books are, this has become somewhat dated. With the advent of PiOS (replacing Buster), there are some modifications one needs to make in order to have success. It IS written very well (a few typos which always bug me) but otherwise a good read and a good set of instructions.

1. This book shows you how to build your own Linux Web server with Ubuntu Linux. It does!2. and host your own website, Yes!3. at home for free, Yes, except for home internet service, from Time Warner or At&t.4. without having to pay a web hosting, company like GoDaddy or Web.com: yes, and you get to have a webserver in your home.5. Whether you are ten years old or 80, even if you have never worked with Linux before and you are not that good with computers. Mostly!! You do need to know how to locate accurate information, if you want to understand what you're doing. And this book does cover the total picture: For example, first thing you will see on your Linux Ubunto Server is "Landscape.canonical.com." This book explains the URL you see on your server, and it is actually the people who create Ubunto. I probably would have never figured this out surfing Ubunto Linux help sites on the web. This book is excellently written and fun to follow! This book does seem to introduce you to the big peices of server administration and it's pretty detailed. I think this book is tons better than going it alone and picking out your own Youtube or web blog guides.I bought this book primarily, because I wanted an all-in-one guide that I had not found on youtube or reading blogs. My favorite part about this book is that it starts with making your own "Installation CD" (or DVD). I never found a youtube video that describes changing settings on firewalls, permissions, how to make forms and integrate MySQL, all in one place, like this Book does!!!I also received a lot of help through email experimenting with permissions from the Author, M. Wright! I wanted to get his comments on permissions and he emailed new commands to try and elaborated. Super cool!There are 4 minor things and I mention because they may help, as a new server admin, to minimize a few roadhumps:1. I'm more of a windows desktop dude than a Linux server dude. It appears this book doesn't get into Apache, or the fold structure of Linux. Like why some files are in init.d and some are in other places.2. The second thing I found is that arpscan is not mentioned in this book. Unless it's mentioned in the paypal or MySQl parts I haven't gone through yet. However, the back of the book lists many helpful linux commands. I wanted to bang around on my installation and change some things so I knew exactly what my server is going through and this book helps you easily cross reference commands you may see online, stay on track or easily start over, hence the bootable install CDR/DVD-/+R!3. The third minor detail is that the built in Firewall with Ubunto called "ufw" may have caused me a problem or maybe I changed a setting. This book introduces the Ubunto built-in firewall and explains how to open port 22 for SFTP. In my case, I wasn't sure if the ufw firewall should be running or not, or if it runs automatically. At one time, I might have changed some settings, and I found my firewall wasn't running automatically. At one time, I had to add a rule to allow port 80 to get my website up and running. I don't think the books tells you to add a rule for port 80 in ufw.4. The fourth issue I came across was during the email setup. I decided to reference a website, to get it working: https://rtcamp.com/tutorials/linux/ubuntu-postfix-gmail-smtp/, in particular, toggle Google's "junk" spam filter. And I'm not sure why the website uses the certificate of /etc/postfix/cacert.pem while the book calls for /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt.In fantastic review, this book awesome! It lets you setup a SQL server, web server, mail server and goes over permissions and DNS. Another reason I purchased this book, is that it tells you how to make a CD (or DVR) so you can wipe (format) your server and redo everything or bring a CD to your friends house for installation. And the install takes about 35 minutes. I'm pretty happy with the book using Ubunto server because it seems Ubunto runs with a small footprint. I'm using 4% of my server memory and have Ubutno running on about a 4 year old 4Gb RAM desktop.For knowledge, this book is technical and awesome! It makes me feel like I could have a conversation with a real Linux Admin, because it goes through install and configuration for free and includes setup for PHP, mySQL, mail, SSH, FTP..etc.

One of the clearest instruction books I have read. I set up a working Linux web server in a very short time using this book. The book has nice coding examples to get you started with the more advanced site features that you can program for yourself instead of using packaged software programs. The server example it uses is a most popular one and the configurations would easily be used with any Linux system. I keep mine handy as a reference guide.

I love this book! It is very easy to read and to get a web server set up with this book. One of the best parts of the book is the author's personal view on different things and his sense of humor. He and I think alike in many ways. A pleasure to read and put to practical use.

Very helpful and easy to follow guide.

Great detailed instructions, I love that the author even explains what might go wrong and how to troubleshoot. Good resource for complete novice.

Excellent book - very easy to follow, with correct amount of information - highly recommend it!.