[Chixla] Yup! Debian Development LAMP Server Install for our next meeting

[Jeff Carlson]

Sharon wrote:
> Our own Betty wants to have a development LAMP server to run off of her
> dsl line and I thought that this would make a wonderful meeting topic.
> Anyone up for a Debian server install meeting? I'm thinking it might be
> one of the weekends anytime after Aug 11th.

Well, if I knew the date I might actually try to attend.  :)  DefCon is 
Aug 4-6, and LinuxWorld SF is Aug 14-17, so any Saturday after the 11th 
would be fine for me.
Have I really been too lazy to check the web site?
> While I've done installs before, I've not set up a server sans X so this
> will be a learning experience for me. Interesting learning opportunities
> could be setting up Apache for virtual domains, firewalls, serving behind
> a NAT, ssh security issues, setting automatic apt-get security updates,
> MySQL user/databases, system admin, logging ... whew, sounds like fun :)

This certainly sounds like a lot to get done in a single afternoon. 
Depending on the speed of the machine, and if you already have all the 
update DEBs downloaded, it could take a long time to just install the box.
In production I prefer to have an installation server to serve all this 
up over NFS, and I like RedHat's kickstart system which allows me to 
automate a bunch of post-install steps.  I'm sure there's a way to do 
NFS installs for Debian, but I'm not positive on anything like 
kickstart.  Perhaps a post-install script is in order.
Virtual hosting with Apache is pretty easy.  I have a fairly general 
purpose firewall script I like to use, which you are welcome to also 
use.  It also handles NAT.  For SSH, just disable root logins.  For 
MySQL, I guess that all depends on what data she wants to have.  Syslog 
should already be configured fairly appropriately, unless you are 
suggesting going to syslog-ng, or you meant something like Apache 
mod_log_mysql.  As for "system admin," I'm not sure to what you are 
referring.  And I don't know Debian enough to know if it comes with any 
sort of automated apt-get upgrades, although setting up a cron job to 
handle this should be no problem at all.
A couple other suggestions.  First, use version control on all config 
files.  RCS is simple enough and gets the job done.  It's a good thing 
to be able to simply check out an older, but known-working, config file 
when you break something.  Read the rcsintro man page for enough to get 
started.  Second, configure the mail server to send root's mail to a 
real user, preferably an account that will be read fairly consistently. 
  Maybe this is what you mean by "system admin."