Running a home Linux Server on AREDN is pretty simple.

• Install LinuxMint Xfce on a cheap laptop.
• Update and reboot it if necessary.

• Change the Linux hostname, which will identify the computer in various places on AREDN. I renamed mine VA7FI-Linux:

  sudo hostnamectl set-hostname VA7FI-Linux

• Install Apache:

  sudo aptitude install curl apache2

The website folder is located here: /var/www/html/ Anything you put in there (with the right permissions) will be visible to others on the AREDN network. Let's get a few things out of the way first.

• Create a link to your home folder for ease of access:

  ln -s /var/www/html ~/

• Change the ownership of everything in that folder so you (the user) and the web process can access them easily. My username is aredn, which you should replace with your own username.

  sudo chown aredn:www-data -R /var/www/html/

• Change the permissions:

  sudo chmod 770 -R /var/www/html/

In general, those permissions are ok, but depending on what you're running as a web service, they could be too permissive. That being said, since we're not exposing our site to the open internet, we're probably ok with those.

We're now ready to write our fist webpage! You can delete the file index.html in the webfolder and create one of your own. There's a simple online html editor that's very convenient to use for small pages: simply edit the text you want on the left, and copy the html code on the right into your index.html file. Here's VA7FI's page as an example.¹⁾

At this point, you should be able to view your webpage from your Linux computer here: http://localhost/