Setting up a RedHat Linux and Apache Web Server
- Linux Installation (continued):
- In General
- When in doubt, first read the RedHat installation manual. If you are asked
to select something such as what services you want started at boot time and
you have absolutely no idea what the services do, simply choose the default.
In general, this will present no problem as you can always modify these things
later. Where it does matter, I will note below.
- Installation Class
- I always choose the Custom class so that I have full control over what
packages are loaded. Also, if you choose Workstation class or Server class,
data on the existing or on all partitions will be erased. This may be OK if
you are installing on a new system, but if you have data you want to preserve,
be careful. On my RedHat 6.0 test machine, I loaded everything except: Console
Games, X Games, News Server, and SQL Server. Note, in many situations, both
the News Server and the SQL Server can be quite useful.
- Creating Partitions
- On a previous page, I briefly described what is necessary as partitions --
minimum and my setup. I recommend that you use Disk Druid for the partitioning
during installation. It is a bit weird at first, but if you read the RedHat
installation pages for the Disk Druid and play with it a bit you should be
able to create your partitions. In the beginning, don't worry about adding an
NFS mount, if you need NFS, you can always add it later.
I
recommend that when loading Linux for the first time you format all the
partitions and check for bad blocks during the format. This takes a bit more
time, but avoids lots of pain later. In any case, you must format the swap
partition.
- Selecting Components
- If like me, you have chosen the Custom installation class, you will be
able to select the components you want to install. If you don't know what you
want, used the default selections, and add X Window System, Mail, WWW, File
Managers, Networked Workstation, SMB (Samba) Connectivity, and DNS Name
Server, Printer Support, Print Server. Optionally add C Development, Perl,
Development Libraries, and anything else that interests you.
- Configuring the Time Zone
- The first time I installed Linux, I selected the option to set the
Hardware clock to GMT. This ultimately created a number of problems, so I no
longer set it. Be sure to set the correct time zone by choosing a city near
you. I use Europe/Zurich since it is the closest city to where I live that is
in the listbox.
- Configuring a Printer
- If you have never worked much with a Unix system, I recommend that you
leave printer configuration to later. Actually at my site, my Linux server
does not (yet) have a printer attached. It uses one of the printers on the
local network connected to a Windows 98 or Windows NT machine.
- Authentication Configuration
- For the moment, on your first Linux machine, it will not be necessary to
Enable NIS (useful for facilitating administration of large networks).
However, I recommend strongly that you enable Shadow Passwords. If you don't
know what it is, don't worry. I also recommend that you enable MD5 Passwords.
However, be aware that some third-party software may not work properly with
MD5 enabled (I haven't found any cases).
- Installing LILO
- You want to put LILO in the MBR (Master Boot Record) in virtually all
cases, except if you want to dual boot unfriendly systems such as NT. At one
point you will be asked to fill in the contents of the Boot Label. The only
thing to note here is that the boot label are the characters that you actually
type in when the machine is booting up (boot: prompt) to select which system
(of a dual boot or experimental Linux boot) to boot. The first time that I set
up a machine, for my Windows boot, I entered "Windows 98", which is a bit long
to type. The second time, I used "Win98", and now, I no longer have a Windows
boot.
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