Unless of course the admin chose workstation and no GUI during the install, which would baffle me. But that's what I was presented with, keep in mind he was a Windows Admin. A smart person but not at all familiar with what he was installing. Since "Linux" web servers don't usually have a GUI interface why would you need that? It's getting rather tiresome hearing all these people make excuses for the lack of a unified installer strategy for Linux. Even In windows where there are literally hundreds of installer packaging tools they all work the same way to the user. Even in the documentation how long would it take me to figure out how Redhat installs packages. With Windows I just had to know where the package was and double click it. With Redhat, I knew the packages could eventually be found but had no idea where to look for the install instructions.
No there was no actual confidential material present on my home system. I thought that obscurity was the better part of security in any case I isolated it mostly because it had to work not connected to the internet and I didn't want the files and structures laying around on a hosting server.
Well partially, I knew that all the packages I needed were there on the CDs, it was simply not obvious where to find the info to install them or how to install them after I found them and the rpm program that I remembered vaguely using didn't seem to be helping. If they were self contained packages like everywhere else in the computing world (.msi,.dmg,.pkg or whatever) even just executable it would have been a snap. That's what I'm blaming, not Redhat specifically it just happens that Redhat was the distro that I was given.
Ok you haven't read everything here so I'll lay it out for you. I designed and coded a website. I used wampserver (yes I researched what tool I could use on a windows box to install a wamp stack there are several) on my system at home to do the coding and testing because I didn't have a Linux server handy and it was confidential and I couldn't put it on a computer connected to the internet. When I went to the customers site I had it on the CD with the web site files. I had asked the customer to install Linux on the intended server. I didn't know that he was installing Redhat, a distro that I am largely unfamiliar with. When I got there I learned that he had prepared the machine with Redhat Linux on it but he had installed a workstation version that did not include the AMP stack. I struggled with the attempted installation because I had no internet access and only the CDs to install from. I did not have time to start from scratch. I had never heard of yum. I discovered that the guy was actually a windows admin and he also had a windows box with a fresh install of windows XP pro handy. With one executable (that I had fortuitously brought with me) I installed my test environment and had the site up and working. However I had wasted a considerable amount of time trying to get Redhat up and working.
And yes the tray tool that you can use to administer the wampserver package does check for updates and take care of installing them. So yes I get the security updates. However since my client is not on the internet I have to take him the upgrade package on a disk anyway.
The point here is that with the wampserver executable installer I had to simply double click the exe and bingo everything installed, no dependencies to worry about and it was set up and running in 15 minutes from a base install of windows. I did have a windows admin handy and all we had to do was make sure that port 80 was free by killing and making manual any webserver service that might have been running in a base install of XP (I don't know if IIs is installed by default in a base install of XP professional) and the wampserver installation came with a tray piece for admin, phpmyinfo pre-installed and the mysql administration tools pre-installed. copy my web site files to www directory, edit the httpd.conf file from the pull out in the tray menu. run the phpforum installer and bingo done and going home. I had hoped that the Linux install would have gone similarly (it usually does when I'm dealing with a web host provider) but I was frustrated.
Thanks, I've used IP Cop or Smoothwall for a voip application. Pretty simple really. I tried to get Ubuntu Server (PPC) installed on my G4 but it didn't recognize the third party IDE cdrom drive and it failed to get past the trying to choose the install media. I haven't tried Debian yet but I suspect it will fail similarly. I'll take a look at Openfiler as I have a small system I want to turn into a NAS.
I brought it on a CD, I had been using it as a test environment while developing the web site. I had asked them to install Linux and they had obtained the Redhat CDs (a distro with which I was unfamilliar but he had to follow mil specs and RedHat was the only one approved at the time) and installed but the windows only admin didn't actually install the server version and the install version he used didn't install the AMP portion by default. The network was an internal Military only network and not connected to the internet. I tried to install the AMP stack but not finding anything that stood out in the docs that came with the CDs and there not being any reason that I would type "yum install httpd" randomly or even "man yum" I failed to get it installed. It turned out that my test environment was better suited to their admin's skill set anyway so we went with that. I had wanted them to use Linux because I thought that it might be a more suitable environment for a webserver but hey learn something every day I guess.
Yeah I figure that out after I noticed the link. Wow, who'd have guessed that you had to install the c++ compiler to get a web-server and database system running. And that dependency chain was amazing.
Yeah that may be true but if you have to choose from 400 what features do they all have and how long will it take to find the ONE that has the features that I need. If none of them do, how many have ALL the features so I don't have to choose. I've been told that the beauty of Linux is that if the feature doesn't exist I can just write it myself.
What if I don't have the time, skills or money for that I'll just go with the least confusing solution I can find that has the closest feature set.
I'll trade a bit of money and lock in for the simplicity of buying it off the shelf and knowing it's a multinational company with a huge customer service department.
Just playing Devil's advocate. I've been a Linux fan since kernel version 0.29. But I just can't find a distro that works out of the box. I'm playing with Mint but even that has holes and I just can't download a.exe or a.msi that installs a feature that is missing that I need. Oh what is the command that is like yum for Mint? All the distros seem to have a different way to get missing software but I can never remember what it is and do they all actually get all the dependencies and versions correctly. I seem to never be able to guess which dependent version goes with what it is that I'm trying to install.
Actually I meant the entire lamp stack and I had never heard of yum it's not documented very well and the application yum is not exactly named "install-missing-software" is it. I went with windows XP and the wampserver installation. Works like a charm it installs itself and was trouble free.
Or do you just really like reinstalling over and over for no reason?
Hey he probably runs Windows on one machine like the rest of us this just goes without saying...
Slashdot Mirror
no
Unless of course the admin chose workstation and no GUI during the install, which would baffle me.
But that's what I was presented with, keep in mind he was a Windows Admin. A smart person but not at all familiar with what he was installing. Since "Linux" web servers don't usually have a GUI interface why would you need that? It's getting rather tiresome hearing all these people make excuses for the lack of a unified installer strategy for Linux. Even In windows where there are literally hundreds of installer packaging tools they all work the same way to the user. Even in the documentation how long would it take me to figure out how Redhat installs packages. With Windows I just had to know where the package was and double click it. With Redhat, I knew the packages could eventually be found but had no idea where to look for the install instructions.
Didn't and doesn't seem to have any problems. I use on a daily basis for a production project server (dotproject).
No there was no actual confidential material present on my home system. I thought that obscurity was the better part of security in any case I isolated it mostly because it had to work not connected to the internet and I didn't want the files and structures laying around on a hosting server.
Well partially, I knew that all the packages I needed were there on the CDs, it was simply not obvious where to find the info to install them or how to install them after I found them and the rpm program that I remembered vaguely using didn't seem to be helping. If they were self contained packages like everywhere else in the computing world (.msi, .dmg, .pkg or whatever) even just executable it would have been a snap. That's what I'm blaming, not Redhat specifically it just happens that Redhat was the distro that I was given.
Ok you haven't read everything here so I'll lay it out for you. I designed and coded a website. I used wampserver (yes I researched what tool I could use on a windows box to install a wamp stack there are several) on my system at home to do the coding and testing because I didn't have a Linux server handy and it was confidential and I couldn't put it on a computer connected to the internet. When I went to the customers site I had it on the CD with the web site files. I had asked the customer to install Linux on the intended server. I didn't know that he was installing Redhat, a distro that I am largely unfamiliar with. When I got there I learned that he had prepared the machine with Redhat Linux on it but he had installed a workstation version that did not include the AMP stack. I struggled with the attempted installation because I had no internet access and only the CDs to install from. I did not have time to start from scratch. I had never heard of yum. I discovered that the guy was actually a windows admin and he also had a windows box with a fresh install of windows XP pro handy. With one executable (that I had fortuitously brought with me) I installed my test environment and had the site up and working. However I had wasted a considerable amount of time trying to get Redhat up and working.
And yes the tray tool that you can use to administer the wampserver package does check for updates and take care of installing them. So yes I get the security updates. However since my client is not on the internet I have to take him the upgrade package on a disk anyway.
The point here is that with the wampserver executable installer I had to simply double click the exe and bingo everything installed, no dependencies to worry about and it was set up and running in 15 minutes from a base install of windows. I did have a windows admin handy and all we had to do was make sure that port 80 was free by killing and making manual any webserver service that might have been running in a base install of XP (I don't know if IIs is installed by default in a base install of XP professional) and the wampserver installation came with a tray piece for admin, phpmyinfo pre-installed and the mysql administration tools pre-installed. copy my web site files to www directory, edit the httpd.conf file from the pull out in the tray menu. run the phpforum installer and bingo done and going home. I had hoped that the Linux install would have gone similarly (it usually does when I'm dealing with a web host provider) but I was frustrated.
Day late and a dollar short there chief.
whooosh!
run a webserver on an internal non internet connected network. Answer your question genius?
Thanks, I've used IP Cop or Smoothwall for a voip application. Pretty simple really. I tried to get Ubuntu Server (PPC) installed on my G4 but it didn't recognize the third party IDE cdrom drive and it failed to get past the trying to choose the install media. I haven't tried Debian yet but I suspect it will fail similarly. I'll take a look at Openfiler as I have a small system I want to turn into a NAS.
obviously horatio there are far more things in your philosophy than you dreamt of.
I brought it on a CD, I had been using it as a test environment while developing the web site. I had asked them to install Linux and they had obtained the Redhat CDs (a distro with which I was unfamilliar but he had to follow mil specs and RedHat was the only one approved at the time) and installed but the windows only admin didn't actually install the server version and the install version he used didn't install the AMP portion by default. The network was an internal Military only network and not connected to the internet. I tried to install the AMP stack but not finding anything that stood out in the docs that came with the CDs and there not being any reason that I would type "yum install httpd" randomly or even "man yum" I failed to get it installed. It turned out that my test environment was better suited to their admin's skill set anyway so we went with that. I had wanted them to use Linux because I thought that it might be a more suitable environment for a webserver but hey learn something every day I guess.
Oh one little detail I failed to mention. I had no access to the internet I only had the redhat install disks. Does that change how it gets installed?
Yeah, does that work from the CDs I had no access to the internet.
Yeah I figure that out after I noticed the link. Wow, who'd have guessed that you had to install the c++ compiler to get a web-server and database system running. And that dependency chain was amazing.
what exactly did you google, I couldn't even guess.
Yeah that may be true but if you have to choose from 400 what features do they all have and how long will it take to find the ONE that has the features that I need. If none of them do, how many have ALL the features so I don't have to choose. I've been told that the beauty of Linux is that if the feature doesn't exist I can just write it myself.
.exe or a .msi that installs a feature that is missing that I need. Oh what is the command that is like yum for Mint? All the distros seem to have a different way to get missing software but I can never remember what it is and do they all actually get all the dependencies and versions correctly. I seem to never be able to guess which dependent version goes with what it is that I'm trying to install.
What if I don't have the time, skills or money for that I'll just go with the least confusing solution I can find that has the closest feature set.
I'll trade a bit of money and lock in for the simplicity of buying it off the shelf and knowing it's a multinational company with a huge customer service department.
Just playing Devil's advocate. I've been a Linux fan since kernel version 0.29. But I just can't find a distro that works out of the box. I'm playing with Mint but even that has holes and I just can't download a
Pretty sad statement but yeah if you think win98 is better than Redhat linux I guess you're right.
Actually I meant the entire lamp stack and I had never heard of yum it's not documented very well and the application yum is not exactly named "install-missing-software" is it. I went with windows XP and the wampserver installation. Works like a charm it installs itself and was trouble free.
Or do you just really like reinstalling over and over for no reason?
Hey he probably runs Windows on one machine like the rest of us this just goes without saying...
Stop holding back, tell us what you really think, he's not just and asshole he's an anonymous asshole.
Where do they keep these dredges? They must be near water I guess. Don't they need those dredges in their harbors?
Have you tried installing Apache on Redhat if you didn't install it from the disk the first time? I gave up.
Wow, 400 that beats Microsoft six ways from Sunday.