Setting Up Pentium 2 400MHz Web Server - Help Needed

[Tom McCurdy]

Hello I just acquired a Pentium 2 400 MHZ Kayak with 160 MB of ram with 2- 2-gig hard drives running Windows NT. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what I would need to do to create a web server. If you could provide any help at all it would be great. Thanks,

-Tom

 

[graphic7]

You probably want to install Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server. Windows NT uses a pretty old version of IIS - nothing that you want to put out onto the Internet. Once you install Windows 2000 || 2003 Server, we can go from there.

If you're wanting to turn this server into a web server that hosts dynamic content (PHP, MySQL, etc.), I'd forget about Windows, and start considering UNIX-like alternatives such as FreeBSD, Solaris, and possibly Linux.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

How would I go about creating it into a Unix-like alternative?

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Would I need to download Suse or something/>?

 

[graphic7]

Would I need to download Suse or something/>?

SuSE would be a start. You'll need to download something, whether it be FreeBSD, Solaris, or Linux. Since your relatively new to the UNIX scene, I'd recommend you go with SuSE or Fedora. I've recommended Fedora to a user or so around here, and they seem to be satisfied with it.

If you do plan on going with Fedora it's 4 CDs, I believe, and you'll be wanting Core 3. The distribution, itself, and plenty of documentation for once you get it installed can be found at:

http://fedora.redhat.com/

When installing, I recommend you choose the 'Server' installation schema. This should install PHP, Apache, MySQL, and plenty of other stuff you might need later on.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/iso/
which ones do I want?

 

[dduardo]

You'll want:

[ ] FC3-i386-disc1.iso 03-Nov-2004 17:05 617M
[ ] FC3-i386-disc2.iso 03-Nov-2004 17:07 638M
[ ] FC3-i386-disc3.iso 03-Nov-2004 17:08 637M
[ ] FC3-i386-disc4.iso 03-Nov-2004 17:10 386M

If the download is too slow try this site:

http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=64

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Alright... hmm I just realized I am going to have to get a bigger harddrive... the 2-2gb harddrives won't cut it. Also I am considering trading in my 3 megabit cable internet for 5 mb up/down DSL... which I found out about today... what do you think?

 

[dduardo]

If your feeling adventurous you can give Gentoo a try. All you need is the 50MB mininal CD. Their documentation is very good and highly customizable.

http://www.gentoo.org/
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Is it easier to set up a server using fedora

Basically what would be the advantages to using gentoo?

 

[dduardo]

It is a much smaller install and you get to learn about the inner workings of linux.

But yeah, go ahead with fedora. It will be much easier and quickier to get up and running. I was just suggested gentoo because you said you didn't have much room

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Hmm maybe I will try gentoo on some of the other computers I recently acquired.

 

[graphic7]

I installed Gentoo last week. Took roughly two times before I was able to do an install without looking at the documentation. I was quite disappointed in Gentoo given all the hype that surrounds it. It's certainly not ready for a production environment, but that really isn't the focus in this thread. Yes, you can minimize the packages on your system, but I consider the pain of the install, itself, not worth it.

If you want to have a minimal distribution, and you're willing to spend 4 hours - 1 day+ (depends on your hardware) installing it, go for it; it'd be worth your time in that case. It's a decent distribution to experiment with, however, it'd take you quite awhile to setup a server with all the packages you'll need. A Fedora "server" schema install would not install too many more packages (and you should also have some space left to boast) than all the dependencies Gentoo will build to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Sure, you'll have plenty of other stuff installed, but you never know when you might need it, nor will you have to wait to build the packages.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Alright well I am taking parts from my old 2200 to create the server
...
I would do it the other way around but I don't have a video card for it since I went dual montior on my 2600

 

[Tom McCurdy]

HAAHAHAHAHA
I am so stupid
I took out the hard drive from my 2200 which has no video card so I could run it on the 400 mhz computer as a server with fedora, but then I realized I should just take the Matriox AGP video card from my old server and pop it into my 2200 and use it as the server...

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Hey umm what do i do with these iso's i downloaded...

I have burned about `10 cds and none work. I was wondering if somone could tell me what exactly I should do.

 

[gnome]

What's happening (or not happening)?

 

[Gary King]

Switch to Apache :D

 

[gazzo]

Hey umm what do i do with these iso's i downloaded...

I have burned about `10 cds and none work. I was wondering if somone could tell me what exactly I should do.

how are you burning them ?

In nero, err.. Burn -> Burn CD image i think.

 

[gnome]

Tom, can you be more specific about what doesn't work? Can that machine boot from other cds, but not from those cds? Are the cds unreadable? Does it boot but not install? Or is there some other problem?

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Well at first I sucessfully burned the cd's or so I thought using nero. Open iso--- burn. But then when I was in the middle of installing fedora is said an error citing as lack of hard drive space as possible source, however I have a 40 gig harddrive so that couldn't be it. I went back to test that disc and it said it had an error on it (I had skipped the check the first time) So then I went back to nero and I tried about 4 more times to burn the cd at lower speeds but every time it failed. Then (this part is funnny) I used win iso to extract it then burned it with the standatd windows burning software... which it had to recreate an iso... which took forever and that didn't work. So basically I can't create sucessful copies of the 4 discs needed I believe...

 

[gnome]

Regarding "lack of hard drive space as possible source", this is possible regardless of the size of your disk, depending on how you partitioned it. Do you remember any other details of the error message?

Regarding the isos: did you use md5sum to verify that there were no errors in the download?

 

[dduardo]

Tom, did you check the MD5 checksum before burrning?

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Regarding "lack of hard drive space as possible source", this is possible regardless of the size of your disk, depending on how you partitioned it. Do you remember any other details of the error message?

Regarding the isos: did you use md5sum to verify that there were no errors in the download?

Dont' remember the specifics of the error.
We didn't partition it we were just only going to have fedora on it.

I have never used md5sum before

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Tom, did you check the MD5 checksum before burrning?

I don't even know what a MD5 checksum is

 

[dduardo]

If you look here:

http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=64

you'll see a column that says MD5SUM. If you click on the link it will take you to a page with two pieces of information. The first part is the md5 hash. The second part tells you which file the hash is associated with.

The purpose of this information is to help you verify the contents of the file you downloaded. By running your downloaded version of the file through a md5 checksum you'll be able to see if the generated string matches the one generated on the server.

In Unix you can just type md5sum <filename> in the command line and it will echo the string. In windows you need to download something like this:

http://www.etree.org/md5com.html

You'll need to checksum all the files you downloaded.

If you use k3b on linux it is nice enough to generate the md5 sum for you before you burn anything.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

That program you have me is not for Windows XP... do you have something that can do it with XP

 

[dduardo]

Come on, let's be a little creative. Did you try runing the program under cmd? How about changing the compatability mode? You could even...GASP!...do a google search for md5 and windows xp?

I know this program runs under windows xp and you'll need to get confortable with the command line if your going to use linux.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Well I could use some help with command line... I grew up starting with windows 3.1 -- I have been GUI all my life. I tried typing in

C:\Documents and Settings\Tom McCurdy>md5sum - c FC3-i386-disk1.iso

but this didn't do anything

 

[Tom McCurdy]

I also Downloaded Fsum 1.0 from download .com

I still don't understnat What it is exactly I am supose to do

 

[Tom McCurdy]

db8c7254beeb4f6b891d1ed3f689b412 FC3-i386-disc1.iso
2c11674cf429fe570445afd9d5ff564e FC3-i386-disc2.iso
f88f6ab5947ca41f3cf31db04487279b FC3-i386-disc3.iso
6331c00aa3e8c088cc365eeb7ef230ea FC3-i386-disc4.iso

What do I do with this information

 

[dduardo]

Compare those strings to that on the website:

db8c7254beeb4f6b891d1ed3f689b412 FC3-i386-disc1.iso
2c11674cf429fe570445afd9d5ff564e FC3-i386-disc2.iso
f88f6ab5947ca41f3cf31db04487279b FC3-i386-disc3.iso
6331c00aa3e8c088cc365eeb7ef230ea FC3-i386-disc4.iso

It looks like the cd images you downloaded are good.

Here is a gui md5sum tool for windows xp:

http://www.irnis.net/gloss/md5sum-windows.shtml

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Well those numbers where What I got directly from the site I have yet been able to generate one of those for my iso's I downloaded
I am dlling the windows GUI based one to see If I can try it.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

HAHAHAHa

Somehow I managed to create this

db8c7254beeb4f6b891d1ed3f689b412 *FC3-i386-disc1.iso
2c11674cf429fe570445afd9d5ff564e *FC3-i386-disc2.iso
f88f6ab5947ca41f3cf31db04487279b *FC3-i386-disc3.iso
6331c00aa3e8c088cc365eeb7ef230ea *FC3-i386-disc4.iso

file was md5sum.lst

 

[Tom McCurdy]

When I burn the iso I keep getting a fixation error now

 

[dduardo]

What program are you using to burn the images with? Have you tried lowering the write speed?

 

[faust9]

My 2 cent: Switch to Suse or Debian. 15Mb initial download(for Suse). The rest is downloaded as you need during the install. Suse is easy to install but the download on demand thing means the install will take a little longer--(about as long as an XP install :) ). Debian can be a little daunting but it's do-able even for a neophite. Both are fast and apt-get/YaST are excellent software instillation schemes.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Nero-- I have slowed it down to 16 x from a 48 x burner... I am having my friends burn it for me now to see if that was the problem. I am getting rid of the nero I have and getting a newer version

 

[Tom McCurdy]

This is making me very frustrated...

I found a great md5 checksum and checked all the images with another program... they are all correct. Then I figured maybe it was my burning program... so I upgraded to Nero 6 Ultra Edition. This allowed me a sucessful burn of the CD, but when I put it in the new computer to start the set up, if failed again. It had the same hardrive error that there may not be ennough space on the harddrive. Anyway I was getting curious as to what was on the harddrive, so I pluged it into this computer. The hardrive 40 gigs is completely blank, and it is not formated. So what do I do now? I have tried to format the the drive using right click format but when I do this nothing comes up.

 

[dduardo]

It shouldn't matter if the hard drive isn't formatted. During the install everything is loaded into RAM.

 

[gnome]

You seem to be stuck in a rut, trying basically the same thing over & over. Well, if it didn't work the first 10 tries, it probably won't work on the 11th.

A few months ago, I was trying to install the gentoo that dduardo knows & loves on a machine with all pretty new (but not 'brand new' so I knew the hardware was all working) hardware: an Asus motherboard & nvidia nforce chipset. I burned about 6 copies (md5sum checked) of their minimal install cd using 3 different cdr drives on 3 different machines and 4 different cd burning programs. None would even boot the nvidia machine, although they did boot just fine on the 2 other machines I was using for burning. And there was nothing wrong with the nvidia machine either -- it was already running Windows XP and another linux distro just fine. Eventually I found that other people were having the same problem with that .iso on that particular motherboard model. The solution turned out to be simply to download & burn the Gentoo "universal live cd" (the "full" install cd) & after that everything worked. AFAIK Gentoo never acknowledged that there was a bug in the minimal cd. It seemed to work for other motherboards. Apparently there was just some incompatibility between it and something on that Asus A7N8X motherboard.

Anyway, back to your situation. Try something different. Maybe there's something wrong with that harddrive, maybe something wrong with the controller (on the mb). Maybe something in the fedora installation is incompatible with something in your bios. It could be any number of things. I think you said you had a few machines available. So why not try: a different hard drive in that box; a different box altogether; a different version of fedora (maybe try one with a 2.4 kernel instead of 2.6); a different linux distro.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

I got fedora installed and runninng... that was a pain in the ass. The main problem was it was using my swap partion as the main partion instead of vise versa so I poped in a windows 95 or 98 cd (can't remember now) delted the partision table then recreated the partisions. Then it was just a matter of finding a computer that burned isos properly and VOLLA

Fedora is ready to go...

Now about how to set up the server.