Laptop, Desktop, Old or New Computer Anything can be a Server

A Server is indiscriminate. A Server is merely software, and powerful software exists to turn any computer, even old Pentium 2 computers with 400 Megahertz, into roaring website servers. The combination of specific software enables websites to be broadcast on the internet. Additional software can enable special features, such as PHP for dynamic website content, and Mysql for convenient information storage.

Besides website servers, there are other technologies. A FTP server allows the transfer of file, yes the lil icons on your desktop that you double click to open . FTP is very convenient, and powerful, but it is not secured via encryption. SSH performs as FTP, but has strong RSA or DSA encryption. SSH can also be used literally as a directory server; with SSHFS you can mount partitions, from anyone SSH server on the internet, to a directory on your local computer.

There are others types of servers called VNC, which allows the internet broadcasting of X11 information. X11 is the Linux defacto monitor/display managment application. X11 is what broadcast information to your laptop/desktop monitor. By transferring X11 information, you can effectively display the desktop, of one computer, on any other computer on the internet; the server will be viewed as a windows on the client, which is the typical, and standard, function of VNC server software.

An old famous, and rather popular type of server is the internet proxy server. SQUID is an extremely popular piece of server software. With it any computer on the internet can connect to the SQUID server, and in turn connect to the internet. By connecting to the internet, through the proxy server, all information, being sent via the web browser, appears to originate from the server computers ip address.

A mail server is software that comes in two parts. First is the MTA: Mail Transport Agent. This piece of software isn’t really a server, and its purpose it to accept, and transmit emails. It is also responsible for the routing of emails, to particular domain names, to particular users on the local machine. Then steps in a program like Dovecot or Postfix. These software packages allow the remote login of a client, that has a verified local account, for the purpose of retreiving emails routed, and stored, by the Sendmail MTA. Dovecot is the server, and Sendmail can be considered the facilitator, because with mail transport Dovecot would have nothing to do all day

DNS server provide domain name to ip adress conversion. Its really as simple as that; you punch a couple of words into your web browser, then one of many DNS servers on the internet automatically convert the words into an IP address. Your web browser is then forwarded to the IP address provided, and access to the web server, on port 80, is provided.

Cheers to your server projects .

DNS Logic

There are countless domain name servers out there, and only a few master servers. Only the master servers have substantial domain name information, whereas the vast majority of servers provide authority for a particular domain name. Authority refers to a domain name server thats providing name to ip information regarding a particular domain name. Once a server is assigned as the name server, the authority first has to be transferred before a new name server can be referenced for name lookups. After the authority is transferred, from lets say Yahoo or Godaddy, if your name server is properly configured requests for an ip address, of a domain you have authority over, will be processed and provided to the client.

I recommend a test domain prior to transferring anything of substantial importance. Login to your Yahoo or Godaddy account and edit the advanced domain configuration. Most likely you can request a transfer, via an obvious menu or button, or you can specifically define the domain name or ip address, of the new name servers, in a configuration menu. In Yahoo they let you input specific DNS location information.

DNS Thoughts

I currently have two DNS servers setup as prescribed by applicable standards (I have named them the standard ns1 and ns2). I have a VirtualBox Debian Etch DNS Server installed on a computer with a Debian Etch DNS Server OS. Since VirtualBox is primarily a graphical program, the base OS installed on the computer has a Gnome Desktop environment. The VirtualBox server has been configured to request an IP address from my router’s DHCP; the VirtualBox OS has a real IP address that is accessible from the Local Area Network. I can obviously configure my router to forward a particular port to the Virtual Server, but I have chosen this configuration. There are two method of configuring your VirtualBox OS, and you can refer to my previous post for a thorough tutorial.

I have the standard DNS port 53 forwarded, from my router, to the IP address of the main DNS server. Then in the zone configuration, I set the ns2 reference to the local IP address assigned to the VirtualBox OS. When a name request comes to ns1 it will either provide the information, or forward the request to my ns2. I have set the forwarding options on my ns2 to the name servers of my ISP.

Also I think I can configure the DNS zone, of a corporately hosted domain name, to reference ns1; by doing this I believe it will compensate for the dynamic IP address provided by my ISP. Instead of Public domain looking straight to my servers external IP address, it will look to the hosted domain name. I will therefore be able to update the zone of the hosted domain to reference my name servers IP address as required to maintain uptime.

Bind9 DNS Potential System Configuration

I currently host my domain names at Yahoo, and would like to setup my own DNS servers. Even tho I have a dynamic IP address, privoded by my ISP, I think I can use a domain name to point to the two name servers, which will allow me to update the domain, with a new IP address, as required to maintain uptime.

I am thinking to use a single machine, with two Virtual Servers installed. Obviously to two Virtual Servers will be used as ns1 and ns2. I have played around with Bind9 a little to get the gist of the simple configuration requirements. Getting Bind9 running is rather straight forward and can be achieved with the editing of only 3 files To setup the domain names, that I want to host on the servers, I will have to look for a bit more information, but am extremely close. Theoretically this can save the hosting costs that I currently pay to Yahoo on a yearly basis. In the future when I register a domain name, I will only have to pay for the initial registration, and can avoid subsequent yearly service costs by immediately transferring the hosting to my personal name servers