Home web server

[Tyler Aviss]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Daniel Armstrong <daniel-r35aSzp7v8jQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi all... Anybody hosting their own web server from home?
>
> As a learning exercise I am considering setting up a server with this
> configuration:
>
> Hardware: Asus EeePC 900HA (built-in UPS! :-)
> OS: Debian Squeeze
> Web Server: nginx serving up some static web pages created in ikiwiki
> Router: Linksys WRT54GL running Tomato 1.27
> ISP: Teksavvy (whose Terms of Use allow running home servers)
>
> A few questions:
>
> 1/ Good registrar? I saw the earlier thread about registering *.ca
> domains... any reason to pay a bit more at domainsatcost.ca vs - for
> example - godaddy to register a *.com domain?
>

Do you need a .com?
Are you using a fixed IP with TS? If not, go to dyndns.org, and
install the daemon to update the DNS via your IP.
For my home box I just a "myname.homeip.net" domain, which works fine.
My actual server-out-in-the-world has a .COM, but for a test box you
don't really need it?

> 2/ For a home server... has experience proved it pays to put the
> server on a separate subnet vs basic forwarding of port 80? I found a
> good tutorial for creating another VLAN in Tomato:
>
> http://www.seiichiro0185.org/doku.php/blog:creating_a_seperate_guest_network_with_tomato
>
> Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

If you're not very experienced with running a server yet, it may be an
idea to physically separate it from the rest of the network (VLAN it
or put it on the outside of the router) so if something goes wrong it
won't do "bad things" on your home network. Port forwarding can be
annoying if you find you want to use an alternate port for something.

Also, switch SSH to a port other than 22. You'll get less sniffing
attacks. Add IP's you commonly want access from (home network, work
IP) to /etc/hosts.allow, and then install the "denyhosts" package to
auto-block those that are attempting to jack your box.



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-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2/CLA

“Even enemies will help each other if they are together on a boat that
is in trouble. ” – Sun Tzu
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists