Re: Web site users, and ftp

[Debian User]

Thanks for the help Mark.

Ok, what I would like to is web/email hosting for friends and a few clients. (so far email works fine with postfix)

So, they need to have their own private domain name/web site/email per user.

This means they need to have their own container.  (presently I store all these folders in /var/www)
The users need to be able to upload files into their container without the help of me. (one user per account).(with ftp they login to their user directory, they won't know where /var/www is.  Should I add a symlink to /var/www/user_html in their home directory to solve this).  Samba works great on the network here, but that won't work accross the Internet for file transfer will it?)

Presently I only use (1) ip address, so far so good.

My Debian box is pretty plain, everything is apt-get installed, nothing compiled yet.

Ok, so FTP is bad to use,  so what do all these web hosting companies tell their users to use to upload files?  from what I am finding out, they all use different procedures with different file transfer clients?

It just seems like I setup this stuff like the majority of other new Debian users, and it would seem that I am not pioneering anything here, so why all the diffferent ways of doing things with such a simple setup.

By the way, I have been using Debian for over two years off and on, I read page after page of documentation, I own about 15 different books on linux stuff, but I still consider myself a total newb because there is like 500 different ways to do the same thing.  

Note-- I don't get paid to learn any of this, I do all this on my own time.

-Debuser

Mark Ferlatte wrote:

begin  Debian User quote on Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 11:52:29AM -0800:
  

Basically I am looking for the Standard procedure for setting up an 
apache server, and ftp for users on a debian box.
    

Well, there isn't really a standard procedure...

  

Someone first tells me not to use FTP, and use some windows util that 
none of my clients will have.  I am at a loss, isn't FTP what everyone 
uses, they sure did on the window servers I use to administrate.
    

I wouldn't use FTP: it's generally more trouble than it's worth.  If
you've got mostly Windows clients, maybe you could use samba to make
your webserver look like a Windows File Share so that people could just
upload files to publish them.

  

You have to figure that I am a newbie and I don't know all the different 
ways of doing things, but I was hoping that there was a way that the 
Average administrator would set up things.
    

Not really.  You're going to have a learn stuff as you go.

  

I looked into this UserDir module, but I am failing to see how that is 
going to help me, for all it seems to do is map a web site to a users 
directory.  I failed to find a page that explained just what it does, I 
only found reference in experienced terms.
    

mod_userdir is what lets you have http://example.com/~username work.
You probably don't need it unless you have people in your org who "know"
Unix-isms.

  

What I need to know is what FTP program would be best to use so that I 
don't have to instruct users on this.
    

Don't use them.

  

Also need to know where I should store my HTML files. (/var/www) or 
(/home/*user/www) ?
    

It depends on what you are trying to do.  Do you need one site per user?
Do you just want an internal webserver for people to publish?

  

I don't know how to use Umask yet, can this set permissions in a Certain 
directory so that all new files created in that directory are a certian 
permission?
    

Sort of.  umask only works for processes.  So, the trick is to set the
umask for whatever fileserver you end up using to give the permissions
that you want.  samba can do this, I'm sure that ftp servers can, too.

  

I see much more documentation needed in the Linux world if this is going 
to be easyier on newbies, there is plenty of reference, but the system 
lacks Layman terms, or terms that explain how something works as a 
whole, or how something should be setup for a certain situation.  Maybe 
    

Have you looked through the HOWTO documentation?  It sounds like what
you want might be in there.  http://www.tldp.org

  

I am just looking in the wrong spot, but the apache web site dosen't 
seem to help much with how things should be done, they only seem to give 
reference for experiance users and I am far from a experienced user.
    

Well, it sounds like you should start by reading through the
documentation that you have available to you, and then work from there.

  

Sorry if I sound upset, I am just frustrated spending all day on 
something that takes 5 mintues on a windows server.
    

Well, yeah.  You know how Windows works already.  I don't think that you
can expect to pick up a totally different way of doing things in a day
and expect to be just as fast...

M