Setting Up A Site Server with Jaguar

rgraham writes "James Duncan Davidson (the original author of Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant) has an article over at O'Reilly's MacDevCenter that walks you through the steps of not only getting Apache up and running on 10.2 (pretty simple, I know) but also DNS and Mail. The aricle goes along well with Alan Graham article on how to setup your own .Mac type service."

Comments

Re:You too

[mackstann]

no no you have it all wrong, its BUELLER!

seriously though, i dont think the idea is to fully dedicate a mac to being a server, i think the idea is to turn your desktop mac into a desktop mac AND a personal mail/web/etc server, just to make things convenient for yourself. anyone who goes and buys a $1500-3000+ mac just to install apache and sendmail and put on their dsl connection is an idiot.

also keep in mind that jaguar *does run* on some not-so top of the line macs, which would cost fairly little (or nothing, if they're laying around).

Re:You too

[foniksonik]

The coolest part about a Mac these days is having a $200 dollar linux box in the closet and a Powerbook on the coffetable.... playing music wirelessly through the stereo system served from the mp3 streamer in the closet through the PBook with iTunes while reading /. and checking out how many other people are also listening to your stream via the webpage you designed in PHP and MySQL on the PBook localhost and then moved to your linux box w/o any hassle or reconfig... just a straight tarball copy and an apachectl graceful...

So why would anyone pay $3000 for a home server? It's not about the server, it's about having a perfect machine that you can do it all with... the ultimate pro-sumer device for the home. Develop, play, remore-admin, play, manage the household, play, play games, play, stock market, play, develop some more, play....

any questions?

Re:Web Server on Powerbook

[foniksonik]

It is a wonderful thing to do j2ee dev at the local Starbucks on your localhost Apache /Tomcat/whatever... then finally to upload it all to your dedicated server through your tMobile account... I mean can you get any better? Not to mention how jealous all your friends are that not only can you afford the Powerbook but that it actually makes more money for you while you appear to be taking it easy (well, you really are at least half of the time...).

Ah, the joy of a real dev/small deployment/test bo

[ronabop]

What, to me, is a real development/test box?

1. It's not some wonky, secure, stripped, stable *nix box that can't run GUI IDEs.

2. It can give me multicolored colored visual cues to code, so monochrome terminal sessions are out. Colored terminals are OK, but they lack the same elegance of a full GUI.

3. It can quickly deal with running those additional programs I need when reading laughable client 'specs' in PowerPoint, MS word, HTML email from hell, etc.

4. The code, on my GUI-heavy isolated dev box, can run identically to the code deployed on the stripped, burly, boxen.

5. If I need to test speeds without a GUI, I can ignore it, and use the box in a stripped, clean, mode.

6. It must be stable without being cold and wooden (Red flag of personal preference, I find almost all *nix platforms to be far less comfortable than they could potentially be. I know the KDE/Gnome/Solaris folks are working on it, and have their advantages as well)

7. It must support additional "development necessary tools" such as playing mp3's, accounting for my time with professional accounting software, play mpg's, and run the occasional "break tool" in the form of some game that isn't 5 (or more) years old.

8. It must support running javascript, and be able to test IE, NN, *and* lynx, and be able to run MacOS 9, MacOS X, X windows (and sub-managers), as well as MS windows (and their many variants).

9. The hardware and software should need my personal intervention for tweaking and updates, well, almost never. I am not paid to update my box, I am paid for writing original code.

I run a business, and I use (deep breath) LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, SuSe (on X86 and PPC), Debian (on PPC and X86), Mac OSX, RedHatX86 (four versions), OpenBSD (PPC and X86), FreeBSD (X86), SunOS (really, some clients still use it), Solaris (all 'of the flock, ugly), Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, Win NT 3.x, Win NT 4.x, Win2K, Win XP (all).

Of all of the above OS's, which one, do you think, can actually do requirements 1-9? (There's only one, take your time...) I used to do dev work on no less than 3 different boxes a day to meet those requirements. Now I use one.

Of course, if I have a few sites with a few million hits a day (I do), I'll host it elsewhere than my test box, an OS X box.. But I'm not going to develop on that box. I'm going to develop on a box that makes me the most productive, a box where I don't care about IRQ's, drivers, optimizing window managers, running rpm or apt-get or any other time-wasting CLUI tools that interfere with writing code.

For writing code, use a box that meets *your* needs. All platforms prior to OS X meant I was using far too many comps, because I needed multi-platform, multi-client-platform, code. No other platform allows you to test as many platforms at once as PPC/OS 9/OSX on Mac.

-Bop

My Time is More Important Than Money

[reallocate]

You wouldn't necessarily buy a new Mac to use as server. But since the entire Mac world is being migrated to a platform that installs Apache, etc., someone has decided to write a piece explaining how to take advantage of that fact. What's your problem with that?

As for price, I would have paid just as much for a PC as I did for this Mac. All the PC would have given me was the need to install Linux and spend hours tweaking the thing so I could stand to look at it. My time is more important to me than the money, so I went the Mac route.

Why does a "community" that whines so much about "choice" and "freedom" have such a hissy fit every time someone says something positive or useful about a competing platform? Any chance that's because you want to limit choice and freedom to only one kind of software?