Networking with Linux : Setting up a Linux Server

Usually people think that to set up a server some special kind of distribution is needed and most of the people tend to download the server editions of the distros. But let me tell you one thing, downloading server edition might ease your task a bit but then you will never be able to know what is going on at the back. Also distros like Ubuntu Server Edition does not even have a GUI which makes the work of a beginner much tougher.
Here are few packages which you need to turn your regular desktop edition into a server OS.

• Apache2 (Web Server)
• BIND (Domain Name)
• FTP server (I recommend ProFTP)
  
• MySQL Server (If you want a data base)
• Telnet (for remote login, old fashioned but good for learning)
  

Taking Ubuntu as the desktop installed the command will be :- 

sudo apt-get install apache2 bind9 proftpd mysql-server telnet

This configuration is good to go for beginners. We will install more packages as we move ahead. These packages create services which can be started and stoped at any point of time. Now first step is to learn how to start and stop the services and the service names.

sudo /etc/init.d/service_name start/stop/restart

So to start apache2 you will write :-

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

Similarly to stop the Apache server you have to write :-

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

Rest of the service names are :-

• proftpd
• bind9
  
• mysql