[xtremekinetix]

Last night I was playing around with Bosxom (blog software), and discovered that Panther has an Apache webserver built in. This is kind of exciting because it seems like, hypothetically, I would be able to take an old iMac, set it up at home, leave it on and serve up my three or four small websites off of it. Is this possible? If so, anyone else do this? How has it worked out?

[pat++]

Yes it's possible. Just turn on web sharing, and make sure you forward port 80 to your Mac running the web server if you are behind a router. That's it.

[xtremekinetix]

Originally posted by pat++:
Yes it's possible. Just turn on web sharing, and make sure you forward port 80 to your Mac running the web server if you are behind a router. That's it.

Man, that is so cool. I friggin' love this OS.

Thanks for the reply!

[greenamp]

One thing to remember though, most ISPs block port 80 to keep you from running a home server.

[chris v]

I wouldn't say "most," but a lot do. I am actually in violation of my user-agreement with Time Warner simply because I have Apache installed on my machine, but I've been using my home IP address for FTP sharing for over two years, and now I'm running a 96k radio station off of it. They've never blocked any ports, but I suppose one day, they could turn me off, should they choose to.

CV

[OpenStep]

Originally posted by greenamp:
One thing to remember though, most ISPs block port 80 to keep you from running a home server.

Verizon for sure does this.

[CharlesS]

Yeah, I would definitely read the ISP's terms of service and make sure that it's not against the rules to run a web server. You definitely don't want to get kicked off the service for violating the TOS.

Also, check to see if the ISP has any bandwidth limits. My cable ISP, for example, has a 6 GB transfer limit per month. If I were to set up a web server on it, it would very quickly fill up. You don't want that to happen, because it can cost you a bundle in overage charges.

[wadesworld]

Such policies really irk me.

I understand the reason - it's to prevent someone from setting up a p0rn site, warez site, etc.

But some of us just want a site to put our family pictures and more importantly, an email server that doesn't have a stupid 5 Meg attachment limit or 15 Meg mailbox limit. I've got a PC that I bought for $20 running OpenBSD, and all it is is a huge IMAP server. The only accounts on it are me and my wife.

Of course, my ISP will offer you a "business account" if you want servers and a static IP address. For a mere $250 a month.

What's irritating is it's not that ISP's couldn't allow you to have "home severs" - it's that they're too lazy to setup proper network management and monitoring which would allow the home servers to exist, but still catch the true abusers.

Wade

[Krusty]

Originally posted by greenamp:
One thing to remember though, most ISPs block port 80 to keep you from running a home server.

If this occurs, can't you just serve off a different port ? (8080 is the usual alternative of choice for port 80). People browsing to your machine will have to specify port 8080 -- which is a hassle, but not insurmountable. You'll also have to define a new port on your firewall tab, but I understand that people have done this successfully

Also, to xtremekinetix: Personal web sharing requires that a person surf to http://yourmachinesIP/~yourusername/ as the web service is on a per user basis. You will need to enable root user (or download an Apache service package such as Complete Apache to have a system-wide web server (i.e. so that you only have to browse to http://yourmachinesIP/). Still ... a very simple process all in all.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Also, to xtremekinetix: Personal web sharing requires that a person surf to http://yourmachinesIP/~yourusername/ as the web service is on a per user basis. You will need to enable root user (or download an Apache service package such as Complete Apache to have a system-wide web server (i.e. so that you only have to browse to http://yourmachinesIP/). Still ... a very simple process all in all.

I don't think you need to do any of that...

DRIVE -> Library -> WebServer -> Documents

This is the "main" area.

[leperkuhn]

or, set up www.domain.com to forward you to www2.domain.com:8080. run your webserver on port 8080. get a dynamic dns service and your mac update it remotely when your ip changes.

[ryju]

Rogers here in Canada didn't do this, then all of a sudden port 80 was blocked, or certainly stopped working, along with port 2000. ANd yes I did make sure my IP address was correct in the forwarding.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by wadesworld:
Such policies really irk me.

I understand the reason - it's to prevent someone from setting up a p0rn site, warez site, etc.

...

Wade

Not so much. Really, it's to keep someone who pays $49/month for 3 Mbit downstream/128 Mbit upstream from doing the same things they'd be doing if they were paying $700/month for a T1 that gives them 1.544 Mbit downstream/1.544 Mbit upstream.

If you want to do "business" things with your machines, they want you to pay "business" prices, which are about 10x what consumer price points are.

DSL is better for these things... you can get an ISP which will give you 1.5 Mbit/768 for like $70/month for a static IP, and they permit web servers.

[Mithras]

Incidentally, for using your own domain name like www.xtremekinetix.com or whatever, do this:

1. Go to www.zoneedit.com and sign up (it's free).
2. Add a zone for your domain name, e.g. xtremekinetix.com.
3. Pony up $9 and register the domain name of your choice at a place like NameCheap.
4. Using the NameCheap (or your registrar)'s control panel, put the ZoneEdit DNS servers as the DNS for the domain name, as ZoneEdit will have instructed you to do.

5. Stop by http://www.whatismyip.com to check your current IP address on the server machine.
6. At ZoneEdit, add an A record (IP address) for www.xtremekinetix.com and xtremekinetx.com, pointing to that IP address.
7. Download DNSUpdate, and add your ZoneEdit username and password, and set it to update automatically. Now even if your IP address changes, your domain name will always work.

That's it! I've been quite explicit so it looks long, but it's all very, very easy.
hope that helps
-mithras

[ScotHamedia]

Originally posted by Krusty:
If this occurs, can't you just serve off a different port ? (8080 is the usual alternative of choice for port 80). People browsing to your machine will have to specify port 8080 -- which is a hassle, but not insurmountable. You'll also have to define a new port on your firewall tab, but I understand that people have done this successfully

Also, to xtremekinetix: Personal web sharing requires that a person surf to http://yourmachinesIP/~yourusername/ as the web service is on a per user basis. You will need to enable root user (or download an Apache service package such as Complete Apache to have a system-wide web server (i.e. so that you only have to browse to http://yourmachinesIP/). Still ... a very simple process all in all.

This is horribly inaccurate info...
That link will give you apache2, with apache, the latest version is not always the best, the 1.3 branch is still in very active development, they are 2 different apps, I can not say one is better than the other, chose the one correct for you.

The same apache that Apple installs with OS X is the same apache that runs perhaps 80% of the internet web-servers out there. There are very few on apache 2.

Your comment of PWS only working with http://yourmachinesIP/~yourusername/ is false, you can remove this feature which is just a alias in httpd.conf or leave it in. If you cd to /etc/httpd/users/ you will see some .conf files in there, you can add vhost container directives to these files or add them right in httpd.conf as well. I server well over 1000 sites on a plain non server version of OS X using nothing more than the built in apache, it runs php and talks to mysql, postgresl, perl, and a lot more. The out of the box apache that comes with plain non server OS X is the same apache the entire world runs, it is trivial to alter the config file to server more than one site at a custom url, there is even a example in the config file.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by ScottHaneda:
This is horribly inaccurate info...
That link will give you apache2, with apache, the latest version is not always the best, the 1.3 branch is still in very active development, they are 2 different apps, I can not say one is better than the other, chose the one correct for you.

The same apache that Apple installs with OS X is the same apache that runs perhaps 80% of the internet web-servers out there. There are very few on apache 2.

Where in my post did I ever advocate Apache 2.0 as being "better" than the 1.3.x version shipped with OS X ?? Complete Apache happens to use 2.x -- big deal. 1.3.x is just dandy too. I recommended Complete Apache only because it is another simple one-click web serving package (like PWS). If I were pushing 2.x over 1.3.x, I would have actually mentioned that somewhere in my post

Originally posted by ScottHaneda:

Your comment of PWS only working with http://yourmachinesIP/~yourusername/ is false, you can remove this feature which is just a alias in httpd.conf or leave it in. If you cd to /etc/httpd/users/ you will see some .conf files in there, you can add vhost container directives to these files or add them right in httpd.conf as well. I server well over 1000 sites on a plain non server version of OS X using nothing more than the built in apache, it runs php and talks to mysql, postgresl, perl, and a lot more. The out of the box apache that comes with plain non server OS X is the same apache the entire world runs, it is trivial to alter the config file to server more than one site at a custom url, there is even a example in the config file.

Your description of what you can do with the Apache server is absolutely accurate. But you seem to be forgetting that the steps you described above are NOT part of PWS's (or Complete Apache's) one-click web-serving. They require some knowledge of the Unix command line to find and edit httpd.conf/username.conf (which are invisible by default), are owned by root (which means non-editable unless you specifically change their file permissions), and will require additional modifications to boot Apache independently of having a PWS user logged in at all times. The conf file edits you noted are indeed "trivial", but having your system set up so that you can make those trivial edits requires a basic understanding of Unix file permissions, user vs. system/root processes, command line editing, etc. that go beyond the scope of those simple conf file edits and FAR FAR beyond the scope of PWS and its "On/Off" checkbox. I would assume the original poster knows nothing about this stuff or he wouldn't have asked the question he did.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Your description of what you can do with the Apache server is absolutely accurate. But you seem to be forgetting that the steps you described above are NOT part of PWS's (or Complete Apache's) one-click web-serving. They require some knowledge of the Unix command line to find and edit httpd.conf/username.conf (which are invisible by default), are owned by root (which means non-editable unless you specifically change their file permissions), and will require additional modifications to boot Apache independently of having a PWS user logged in at all times. The conf file edits you noted are indeed "trivial", but having your system set up so that you can make those trivial edits requires a basic understanding of Unix file permissions, user vs. system/root processes, command line editing, etc. that go beyond the scope of those simple conf file edits and FAR FAR beyond the scope of PWS and its "On/Off" checkbox. I would assume the original poster knows nothing about this stuff or he wouldn't have asked the question he did.

Um, on OS X it's not necessary to edit the username.conf file to put your website on http://<IP address>/index.html instead of http://<IP address>/~<username>/index.html. Just put the HTML files in /Library/WebServer/Documents instead of ~/Sites.

[xtremekinetix]

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that replied to this thread. The info was helpful and I really appreciated it.