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Table of Contents
Linux Server
Prerequisites
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
Website
The html Folder
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 you're not exposing our site to the open internet, you're probably ok with those.
The index.html File
You're now ready to write our fist webpage! You can delete the index.html
file that's already 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)
When you manually create new files in your web folder, you might have to correct the ownership and permissions using the lines with chown
and chmod
above. Often times, if you can't see a page, it's because the ownership or permissions are wrong.
At this point, you should test that you can view your webpage locally on your Linux computer: http://localhost/
AREDN Node Configuration
Now that the site is working locally, we can share it on the AREDN network.
From the Port Forwarding, DHCP, ans Services
page:
- Setup a DHCP Address Reservation for the Linux computer
- Advertise the service
- Forward WAN port 8080 to LAN port 80
- Don't for get to Save Changes