Setting up a RedHat Linux and Apache Web Server

My interest in setting up a Web Site
I've been using email since about 1984 and have had an online connection to the Internet since about 1993. Because I've been programming since 1962, though this Web site I'm able to make some of the programs that I have written available to a larger audience. My original intention in beginning this site was to provide a cookbook to ease installation of Linux. However, in the mean time, it is no longer really necessary because the ease of installation has progressed enormously in the last two years since I began using Linux. In fact, it is now so easy that much of what I intended present on this site in terms of installation is redundant or no longer necessary. As a consequence, I have been focusing my time on providing new applications available in the Unix Utilities directory.

One of the major problems with Linux, aside from the fact that it is not well known (yet), is that there are too many options for the beginner. This is one of the reasons why Microsoft has succeeded. You buy a computer, and it comes installed with Windows and with Office. This gives most businesses everything they need to get going (except, of course, programs specialized for their business). If you know a bit about computers, it isn't really hard to setup a Linux machine.

What you need:

Unix experience
If you have no Unix experience, you probably should get some before you try this, or at least you should have a lot of perseverance.
An Intel based Personal Computer (or Alpha or Sparc)
Almost any PC will do, but it should be at least a 486 66 MHz with 16 Megabytes of memory and a 500 Megabyte hard disk (1 Gbyte is better). Preferably, the PC should not be a brand new machine loaded with the very latest hardware devices since Linux support tends to take a year or two before the drivers for new hardware devices are ready. I actually bought a new 400 MHz Dell computer with Microsoft NT 4.0, intending to use it as my server. When I started reading the documentation, I quickly realized that the amount of effort to set up an NT Web server would be double that of setting up a Linux server -- this is true for me, but may not be your case. Finally, I installed the Linux server on a 3 year-old Compaq DeskPro 4000, which was recently retired because the mother board was fried by a lightning strike. It is still in service in the basement as a backup (with the second new motherboard in 9 months). This served this page was sent to you by my new Fijitsu 400MHz server. By the way, I was amazed at how easy it was to install Linux, and of course, the second or third time, it goes even faster.
A permanent connection to the Internet
If you are going to have your own web server, you will need a permanent connection to the Internet. When you have a permanent connection to the Internet, you will have a unique IP address or range of addresses assigned to you. These are provided by your ISP. You will also need to know the name or preferably the IP address of the Internet gateway machine used by your ISP. To have your site visible to the rest of the world, you will have to register it with one of the second level domain name registries. To do so, you will have to pay a small fee (about $35 per year), and you will need a secondary Domain Name server. You get this by having either two machines each with different IP addresses, provided by your ISP, or perhaps a friend with a Web site will act as a secondary.
Two Ethernet cards
One Ethernet card is sufficient for a Web server. However, if you also want to have an intranet (other local machines attached to your server), it is a good idea for security reasons to have two Ethernet cards. Using the Ethernet alias feature of Linux, I ran my network for a month with two different network addresses on a single Ethernet card. I don't recommend such a configuration as it is not possible to set up a good firewall with only one Ethernet card.

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