| Brett Glass to the Rescue |
|
Back to the "Brett Glass to the Rescue" Index Back to the
|
Instant Web Server.... Well, Almost. We have a closet full of old 66 and 100 MHz 486 machines with 300-500 MB hard drives, Novell Ethernet adapters, and 16 MB of RAM each. No one even wants to run Windows on them because they're too slow. Can I make one into a passable Web server? What software should I run? Tom Greeley A: With that kind of hardware, you won't want to run Microsoft's Windows NT or Windows 95. The GUIs in both systems will drain too much of the system's memory and processing power. (On the other hand, without a GUI, a fast 486 is powerful enough to saturate a T1-speed Internet connection.) Personally, I recommend that you do what the founders of Yahoo! did when they put up their first Web servers: use the FreeBSD operating system and the free Apache Web server. FreeBSD is real Berkeley UNIX -- the classic version on which most of the Internet is built. Unless you want to buy a physical copy (more on this below), it doesn't cost a nickel; it's free for the downloading. Apache is also free, and is by far the most popular Web server software on the Net. If you already have a reasonably fast way to get to the Internet, or if your high-speed link is up now, all you need to do is download two files. One contains a binary image of the FreeBSD bootstrap floppy disk; the other contains a program that will use the image to make a floppy. (See the FreeBSD Web site for directions.) Make the floppy, boot from it, and follow the instructions on the screen. A full-up version of UNIX will flow in from across the Net and set itself up before your eyes. (Since your system will run slowly with a GUI, don't bother to download XFree86, the optional windowing system.) At the end of the installation, you'll be able to request that the Apache Web server be installed and configured for you -- also automatically. You'll even get a "starter" home page which you can modify to suit your needs. If you'd rather buy a physical copy of the operating system on CD-ROM, or if you want a book that explains in detail how to use it, go to Walnut Creek CD-ROM's Web site. They sell a $49.95 package called The Complete FreeBSD that contains four CD-ROMs and a big, thick book on the operating system (in case you're not experienced with UNIX yet). You can also buy one or more of O'Reilly and Associates' many UNIX books. I sometimes use Windows 95 and NT on client machines, but don't find either OS to be mature or stable enough for mission-critical servers. Walnut Creek CD-ROM runs the busiest software library on the Internet on a FreeBSD Pentium machine, and it just doesn't go down. That's got to be the best testimonial anyone could ask for. |
| © 1998 by Brett Glass. All rights reserved. | About us | Feedback | Trademarks |