giving my lunix at home server a registered domain name

[william chaple]

Hi guys, Ive tried searching in stackoverflow and serverVault, but nothing was listed or the answers were not clear to me.

Anyhow I have a unbuntu OS as a web server and I have LAMP configured. Is it possible to give that at home server to hold the domain name I registered for from lets say goDaddy

thanks guys. I need some tips, ive been trying to do this for about 2 or 3 days and I have been frustrated =(

[Ulf Dittmer]

Do you have a public static IP address for your home machine?

Note that many cable/DSL providers prohibit (or even prevent) setting up public servers on home connections (as opposed to business connections, which tend to be more pricey). Just mentioning it in case that's what you were planning to do.

[william chaple]

hello thank you for the reply.

Well, I have a dynamic IP address. I cant just give my other lunix server a static IP address?

[Bear Bibeault]

I think your best bet would be to find a hosting service.

[Ulf Dittmer]

The public IP is assigned by your network provider; it's not something you can set. But opening up your home network (if that is what you intend to do, you haven't said what the purpose is) to the internet at large is probably not something you should be doing anyway.

[william chaple]

well, I just want to have a at home lunix server. I currently have a domain and hostgator is hosting it.

However, I want my own lunix server at home and just set it up for practice a knowledge. Also want to be able to remote into it with the same domain name from another area.

I know its possible because I had a friend who had his desktop PC converted to a at home server and now host his own website from his "at home server", So I wanted to do the same thing. All I am trying to do is just get some experience because I like it and I want to learn, so if you guys can help me it would be great!

currently the desktop will be through wi-fi, but will always be on.

[Tim Cooke]

Of course it's possible. But you seem to be missing / ignoring some important points made by Bear and Ulf.

- If you just want to host a website then your easiest option would be to find a hosting service. It's a lot easier to get going and is much much much much much (yes really that much) more reliable. Also, as mentioned, your domestic ISP contract will most likely prohibit the hosting of websites using your internet connection. (but they have to prove it first)
- If you are just looking to learn about how web server software works, like Apache, Tomcat, PHP, then you can easily do that locally at home within your home network.

My point here is that there are a number of practical and legal difficulties with hosting your own web server at home for public consumption. You need to be very clear on what you hope to get out of this exercise before you dive in. But in any case, here's a checklist of things you need to do to get it working:

1: Turn on your web server
2: Check it's working locally http://localhost/.
3: Check it's working across your own network, from another machine http://<serverip>/.
4: On your router, open port 80
5: On your router, forward port 80 to your <serverip>
6: Check you can access your site from the public internet http://<your_public_ip>/ (this is the IP address assigned to you by your ISP, Google "public ip address")
7: Setup a "static address to dynamic IP" service like dyndns.org or something like that (you may have to pay for this). This will give you a static URL like "williamchaple.dyndns.org" that will resolve to whatever your dynamic IP is at that time.
8: If your router has the feature, configure it to regularly update your dyndns.org account with its current IP address.
9: If your router does not have this feature, configure your server to regularly update dyndns.org with your current IP address. There are free programs that can do this for linux, but it's not hard to write your own script to do it (I know this because I've done it)
10: Check you can access your site through the 'static' dyndns URL
11: Configure your domain nameservers to point to your 'static' dyndns URL
12: Check you can access your site through your domain name.

As you can see there's quite a lot of moving parts to get the whole thing working. It will probably be quite slow and pretty unreliable.

You need to be a bit more specific about how you "want to be able to remote into it"? Do you mean SSH?, FTP?, something else?

I would stress again that you need to be very clear about what you want to achieve by doing this. From experience I can tell you that it's no walk in the park to get working, and at times is just a huge pain in the hole. Let's assume you get it working though. Best case scenario: You sit back and bathe in your own smugness while your friends view your latest "cute cat memes" being served up from the corner of your dining room. Worst case scenario: Your ISP figures out what you're up to and suspends your service.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Tim Cooke wrote:Worst case scenario: Your ISP figures out what you're up to and suspends your service.

I'd say that's the worst case but one, which is: Someone out there discovers that your site isn't as secure as you thought it was, breaks into your network, and starts accessing and/or modifying and/or deleting your personal files. The internet is a nasty place.

[william chaple]

Tim Cooke wrote:Of course it's possible. But you seem to be missing / ignoring some important points made by Bear and Ulf.

- If you just want to host a website then your easiest option would be to find a hosting service. It's a lot easier to get going and is much much much much much (yes really that much) more reliable. Also, as mentioned, your domestic ISP contract will most likely prohibit the hosting of websites using your internet connection. (but they have to prove it first)
- If you are just looking to learn about how web server software works, like Apache, Tomcat, PHP, then you can easily do that locally at home within your home network.

My point here is that there are a number of practical and legal difficulties with hosting your own web server at home for public consumption. You need to be very clear on what you hope to get out of this exercise before you dive in. But in any case, here's a checklist of things you need to do to get it working:

1: Turn on your web server
2: Check it's working locally http://localhost/.
3: Check it's working across your own network, from another machine http://<serverip>/.
4: On your router, open port 80
5: On your router, forward port 80 to your <serverip>
6: Check you can access your site from the public internet http://<your_public_ip>/ (this is the IP address assigned to you by your ISP, Google "public ip address")
7: Setup a "static address to dynamic IP" service like dyndns.org or something like that (you may have to pay for this). This will give you a static URL like "williamchaple.dyndns.org" that will resolve to whatever your dynamic IP is at that time.
8: If your router has the feature, configure it to regularly update your dyndns.org account with its current IP address.
9: If your router does not have this feature, configure your server to regularly update dyndns.org with your current IP address. There are free programs that can do this for linux, but it's not hard to write your own script to do it (I know this because I've done it)
10: Check you can access your site through the 'static' dyndns URL
11: Configure your domain nameservers to point to your 'static' dyndns URL
12: Check you can access your site through your domain name.

As you can see there's quite a lot of moving parts to get the whole thing working. It will probably be quite slow and pretty unreliable.

You need to be a bit more specific about how you "want to be able to remote into it"? Do you mean SSH?, FTP?, something else?

I would stress again that you need to be very clear about what you want to achieve by doing this. From experience I can tell you that it's no walk in the park to get working, and at times is just a huge pain in the hole. Let's assume you get it working though. Best case scenario: You sit back and bathe in your own smugness while your friends view your latest "cute cat memes" being served up from the corner of your dining room. Worst case scenario: Your ISP figures out what you're up to and suspends your service.

Hello thank you for the reply guys! Actually!! that would be great! I would like to make a at home web server on my private connection. The public does not need to access it. It is just a way for me to understand how it works =) I already have a web hosting server, but just wanted to learn the LAMP side of things and how to configure it.


Ok
1.) Localhost does work and my Unbuntu desktop is always on

before I continue on with this, this is a at home private network and not open to the public right?

for example, I have my desktop (unbuntu web server) and I have 3 other computers connected. I want the 3 computers to still access the unbuntu desktop using a FQDN like windex.cs.fiu.edu (this is my universities FQDN system unbuntu)

[Tim Cooke]

william chaple wrote:I want the 3 computers to still access the unbuntu desktop using a FQDN like windex.cs.fiu.edu (this is my universities FQDN system unbuntu)

Miami huh? I was down in Key West over the weekend, it was super super hot, I'm not used to that kind of heat back at home in Ireland.

Whether or not the domain name will resolve to your machine on the network is a little out of your control I'd say. The University tech bods will have control over that config. So you're probably stuck with using direct IP addressing. To find out what the IP of your web server machine is run the command ifconfig and look for the address labelled inet. You can address the web server using that, for example http://10.10.9.89

That'll be enough to have you accessing the sites hosted on your server from outside the machine itself which will then allow you to have a test bed for learning about web server config.