Forum Moderators: mack
well here it goes my first post.
I want to set-up my own test server at home,just to test my new
website, which operating system is better to use (simple, stable)
suse linux or just stick with my XP home?
Than I was thinking setting up apache is this the right way to go?
Is there anything special I should think about when I connect
my 'test server' to my home network which is also connected to the
internet?
I guess these are all typical newbee.
Thanks for your help
cheers
Marco
Does you name indicate that you are really au faire with IP issues?
I am a MS windows only user, so i would say
1, XP home is definitely NOT an ok webserver O/S, you must upgrade to the Pro version to get IIS
2, You must use the O/S you mean to continue with, choosing Linux means learnining Apache, PHP, Mysql unixy kinda stuff :-)
3, Windows XP pro means IIS, asp.net, vb.net, c#, Access,
MS sqlserver
4, I hope you weren't thinking of hosting your own website, cos then you would need to master DNS, fixed IP etc
Theres too much really, I sure you've got several textbooks, go read erm ,
Your "test" server should have exactly the same OS as your hosting server. So the decision as to which OS will be determined by that.
Is there anything special I should think about when I connect my 'test server' to my home network which is also connected to the internet?
Assuming you'll be using a local domain rather than an internet domain to test with, ensure that all of your URL's are relative path when testing, otherwise they won't work ;)
TJ
Any particular reason? All my scripts I build run on both my windows xp machine and my hosts linux machine. Path to perl are exactly the same, Mod_Rewrite, SSI work exactly the same on both. The only problem I really run into is MYSQL on windows where table names are changed into lowercase.
Any particular reason?
The purpose of a test server is to trial things before rolling out to the hosted server. The only way to absolutely know for sure that something is going to work on the live machine is if the test machine is identical.
I often use the testbed PC to roll out software updates (Apache, MySQL etc) onto to ensure that nothing is going to break in the process before doing that on the live box. That has saved my skin on numerous occasions.
It's not critical - you can test on different machines of course, but it is advisable.
The OP's question was related to operating systems. Given that there's a choice, I would match the live servers OS for those reasons.
TJ
If using Linux, keep in mind that the installation process for software is not as complicated as on Windows. Once you have tested on your test server, you can simply COPY executables and data files to your live server, and in most cases you are done! Try THAT with Windows! If you "test" on Windows, you then have to go through installation, configuration, etc. on the live server all over again.
It's not so critical that you run the same Linux distribution, but it's useful to run one that's close. I run CentOS on my production server, and Fedora Core 5 on my test server. Configurations are different too - for example, I run XWindows (I use KDE) on my test server, and of course do not on the production server. Close enough for government work. :) If it was a complicated enterprise system, I would certainly run IDENTICAL environments, though.
you can simply COPY executables and data files to your live server
If by "executables" you mean binary executables, well you can do this if you really know what you're doing, but otherwise it's more likely than not to cause problems. Far easier to use the server's packaging system to install stuff.
If by "executables" you mean binary executables, well you can do this if you really know what you're doing, but otherwise it's more likely than not to cause problems. Far easier to use the server's packaging system to install stuff.
LOL, my exposure to "the old days" is showing!
You are right. If you do this, you won't be able to take advantage of automatic updates, nor will you be able to use the packaging system to get a list of installed packages, etc. So, I agree - not really a great idea to copy binary executables. And there ARE some situations where it wouldn't work - for example, your production server is a 32-bit OS, and your test server is a 64-bit OS with 64-bit executables installed.
However, this still goes for data and configuration files - there's no "registry" on Linux. Thank goodness! (However, most applications ported from Linux to Windows continue to use configuration files, rather than the registry, so you could still do this even if you test on Windows.)
Let me read the proposed threats and see what it brings.
cheers
VoIPP (and yes that's what I'm involved in in daily life)
