Linux virgin

in what detailed way are you failing?

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/os.html#OSINSTALL

Well I am failing all over the place. I am totally to linux and haven't got a clue how to do anything.

I think i have managed to setup apache but everytime i try and access my site i get 'The connection was refused when attempting to contact localhost', to my mind it sounds like a firewall problem but everytime i try and set what can be allowed and save it, next time i go on it. it had changed back to the old settings.

using Mozilla, apache 8 beta, i am on the root account

I basically need a dummies guide on how to setup all this stuff. I have done it in windows many a time without a glitch but linux seems to hate me.

petewood: if you want any specific info just post what you want to know.

thanks in advance
jack

EDIT: thanks for the link Oluseyi, anymore on setting it up for server use?

[edited by - iamwithstupid on February 17, 2003 6:20:30 AM]

This may be a silly question, but have you actually started apache? (apachectl start)

-Neophyte

I am not that stupid, yeh i have done that.

Any other ideas why it isn't working?

[edited by - iamwithstupid on February 17, 2003 6:35:07 AM]

quote:

---

Original post by Neophyte
This may be a silly question, but have you actually started apache? (apachectl start)

-Neophyte

---

Infact you may be on to something, below is a copy of my console that i use to start apache:

[root@server root]# apachectl -k start
[root@server root]#

Is this right, should it print a starting line, rather than just producing a blank line. I thought this was ok before because it produced no errors, but is this right?

thanks
jack


[edited by - iamwithstupid on February 17, 2003 6:52:00 AM]

no look, apache doesn''t give console feedback for failure, you need to go to the ERROR LOG and see what it says ... I don''t use redhat, but on freebsd the error log is located at /var/log/httpd-error.log

there should be some similar file on redhat .. and if you need to know where it is, you can look through the apache config files, since they specify where it should be (and also the hhhtp-access.log which records who uses your site)

a firewall cannot have anything to do with your problem IF you are accessing the website from the same machine the server is on ... and to do that, type this in your address line "http://localhost/"

good luck ...

[Mon Feb 17 11:34:02 2003] [alert] (22002)Name or service not known: mod_unique_id: unable to find IPv4 address of "server"
Configuration Failed

what sort of output can i expect when i get this working?

will there be some sort of message?

thanks
jack

To check wether apache is running or not you can do
ps -ef | grep httpd
You should see several instances of httpd.

If you have httpd running but apache isn''t working check
ps -ef | grep apache
as well.
Againg, you should see several instances if everything is running.

In any case, from the message you reported I''d guess your problem is in your configuration file. Have a look through the httpd.conf file is see if you can find anything useful there.

Also I''m not quite sure why you would have mod_unique_id built in, as it''s only used by NTP-synchronized server-clusters.
If you don''t see any clues in your httpd.conf file I suggest rebuilding apache without mod_unique_id.

-Neophyte

Try this --

ping server

from your shell. Judging from that apache error, I''d guess that your name resolution is not set up properly. You may have to tweak your /etc/hosts file a little bit.

Shouldn''t this thread be in "Everything Unix" or at least the lounge?

ok looks real simple to me ... there is a line in your apache config ... which NEEDS to be set to the ip or REAL address of your machine, and also, assuming you are using a connection that does not have a complete real DNS name, you will want to add an entry in your hosts file for this ... here''s the example from my computer ...

SET THIS LINE IN httpd.conf to the address of your computer

ServerName XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

Then add this line to your hosts file (probably /etc/hosts)

XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX myshorthostname myshorthostname.myrealispinfo.net

of course you must replace those with real entries, such as

ServerName 192.168.1.1

and

192.168.1.1 gameserver gameserver.rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net

...

then tell me what you get in the error log ...


AND IF IT WORKS ... the error log doesn''t say anything at all - of course the old errors are still in the log till you delete them .. but they wont get added to.

Thanks Xai, I will try that tomorrow.
I was going to try it tonight but when booted up my server it seems to have totally messed itself up (while it was off). Working fine last time I used it, turned it on today and it has tons of problems (don't you love it when that happens?)

Rather than fix all the problems in an os I am unfamiliar with I am going to do a fresh install, giving me a chance to start again and hopefully fix the problem straight away.

Thanks for the help

[edited by - iamwithstupid on February 18, 2003 6:29:08 PM]

Also, when asking a linux question, always mention your distrobution, since they place files in different locations ... and someone who has your distro can tell you exactly what to do.

And if I knew a good website like gamedev, but for those types of questions, I would have told you to move it there .. but I figure a lot of game programmer''s might be thinking about using apache / mysql / php for writting game stuff, websites, etc in ... so I figured I''d answer ...

Also, if you are using it for a server, and not a workstation, and you want to know what''s going on and where things are ... FreeBSD is a very very good OS to use. I have many oses, partly because my last job used BeOS, and my server runs FreeBSD, and I have linux for writing portable code on (I use mandrake 9.0 for my simple workstation, since I don''t want to understand it ...) ... but for the server, after trying 3 versions of linux (SUSE, mandrake, gentoo), I decided to use FreeBSD because of the great cenrtal source of information / documentation. But if you want graphical desktops, FreeBSD still requires slightly manual XWindows configuration, which sucks ...