61 lines
3.0 KiB
HTML
61 lines
3.0 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9">
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<TITLE>"Pocket" ISP based on RedHat Linux HOWTO: Introduction</TITLE>
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<LINK HREF="ISP-Setup-RedHat-HOWTO-2.html" REL=next>
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<LINK HREF="ISP-Setup-RedHat-HOWTO.html#toc1" REL=contents>
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</HEAD>
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<BODY>
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<A HREF="ISP-Setup-RedHat-HOWTO-2.html">Next</A>
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Previous
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<A HREF="ISP-Setup-RedHat-HOWTO.html#toc1">Contents</A>
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<HR>
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<H2><A NAME="s1">1. Introduction</A></H2>
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<P>The guide assumes some familiarity with Linux functionality and general
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Linux/UNIX setup procedure (although not very detailed). Fully functional
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brain is also required for some stages of the procedure. All setup would
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be done manually (without the use of
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<A HREF="http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/linuxconf/">linuxconf</A>,
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<A HREF="http://www.webmin.com/webmin/">Webmin</A> or other
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tools). Not that those are bad or that there is anything wrong with them. The
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reasons for that are: 1) it is comparatively hard to give step by step directions
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that produce predictable results as these tools pretend they are intelligent
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and "know better" (also known as "Windows syndrome") 2) layout of tools changes with time and is different
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in some distributions 3) manual setup gives better understanding of system works
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(not that it is always required though) 4)some tools allow only limited
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configuration of Linux system or do not keep up with updated features of
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services they try to configure.
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<P>I should add, that another solution seems to be very promising. It is
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<A HREF="http://www.prongs.org/virtfs">virtfs</A>
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developed by
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<A HREF="mailto:afra@prongs.org">Afra Ahmad</A>. Its main part is a
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perl script so it does not suffer from being a "black box". It will
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automatically configure all virtual services in a highly customizable fashion.
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<P>It is based on taking
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advantage of the chroot environment. A separate and smaller filesystem is
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created for each virtual server, and when a service is requested, the main
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server will chroot to the desired virtual server.
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<P>This method may take up more disk space, but it is much more flexible,
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especially when dealing with the services. For example, it is possible to have
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two different email accounts bob@vdomain1.com and bob@vdomain2.com (as you are
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dealing with two different passwd files). It might be essential for a bigger
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hosting site.
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<P>For more information please visit the Virtfs page at
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<A HREF="http://www.prongs.org/virtfs">http://www.prongs.org/virtfs</A>.
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<P>While many improvements are possible to the setup described in this HOWTO they might be
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described in later editions of this document - I just outline one possible
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way (accidentally, the one I used). The writeup is aimed at RedHat Linux,
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but with trivial changes can be used on any modern Linux distribution.
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The resulting configuration loosely follows
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the setup of some particular machines built by the author.
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<P>
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<HR>
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<A HREF="ISP-Setup-RedHat-HOWTO-2.html">Next</A>
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Previous
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<A HREF="ISP-Setup-RedHat-HOWTO.html#toc1">Contents</A>
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</BODY>
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</HTML>
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