Virtual Hosting
George Toft
george@georgetoft.com
Sun, 07 Jan 2001 21:08:07 -0700
Hi Keith,
Keith Smith wrote:
>
> George,
>
> Thanks for taking all this time to explain things to me. I'm
> relatively new to Linux and the web. Started doing web stuff about 20
> months ago, Linux about 13 months. I really like
> Linux,Apache,MySql,PHP.... and hoping to like qmail.
>
>
> I'm making my first attempt at a web server at http://204.17.52.19. My
> friend has several servers and wanted to do Linux so he asked me to
> help.
>
> I'm going to try my hand at Qmail at about 5am tomorrow.
QMail has its quirks. We chose it because it has far fewer security
problems than sendmail. On the other side of that coin, however, is
the fact that there is far less documentation on configuration for
qmail. After messing with qmail for two days, we called inter7
(www.inter7.com) and paid them $450 to set it up for us. The tech
told me he spent three weeks with it before he could get it to work,
so I felt much better. I really don't like it as an MTA, but its
mail queue can't be beat. It stored messages as individual files,
which allows you to hunt down undelivered spam using grep, or more
practically, move entire users' mail to a holding area. Sendmail
shoves all of the messages into one huge file, so deleting unwanted
messages is impractical.
> My goal is something very simple. Linux,Apache,MySql,PHP,Qmail,EZMLM,
> and DNS all on one box to start. I would like to start doing virtual
> hosting.
I have issues with DNS on the same box as the web server. I prefer
to keep DNS well protected and I heap all kinds of traps on it. The
network I mentioned before (on Exodus) used rpc to admin their DNS.
Then one day, a disgruntled webmaster of one of our clients removed
his former employer's (our client) DNS entries. The owner of the
outsourced servers had no clue how he did it. Hmmm... Let's take a
trip over to rootshell and see.
> I visited your site at http://www.georgetoft.com, very interesting.
> So 65 hour weeks is the norm?
50-60 is the norm for Unix Engineers at American Express. 60-70
was the norm at my last job. The big difference is I get paid by the
hour now, so I don't mind the hours. Working 70 and getting paid
for 40 made for a very unhappy George.
> Mind if I pick your brain from time to time? Like every 5
> minutes......?
No problem. As long as you don't mind a slow (a day or two) turn-
around for responses. You should find much of what you need for your
project here: georgetoft.com/network - I include all of the config
files for each server. I actually had to test this when my mail
server died. I used my own website as my backup source for the
config files, so I know they're good.
George
> Thanks for all the info.
>
> Keith
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: George Toft <george@georgetoft.com>
> To: <plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us>
> Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 11:27 AM
> Subject: Re: Virtual Hosting
>
> > Cheap as the boss could find. Ultra-66 IDE's, but the UDMA-66
> > drivers were not installed, so they were a little slower. We could
> > sustain 2 MBytes/sec data transfer, which is about 40% of the max
> > that UDMA-66 can *sustain* (or so I've read). My goal was to give
> > the box as much RAM as was necessary to minimize hard drive access,
> > so drive speed became less important.
> >
> > These run Apache, wu-ftp, qmail, snmp and mysql. Each server is
> > totally self-contained, except for DNS. Most of the servers had
> 64MB
> > RAM, some 128MB, and a couple had 256MB. All hard drives are 10GB
> > Quantum fireballs, with a few Seagates and Western Digitals (no, the
> > WD's did not work very well). Network is 100BaseTx.
> >
> > The busiest site we had (10mbps traffic the day her site was
> > announced on the Howard Stern show) was actually running on three
> > of these boxes using round-robin DNS. Her site stayed up throughout
> > the show, which is very unusual for a Howard Stern promo. I wish
> > I could remember her name.
> >
> > George
> >
> >
> > Keith Smith wrote:
> > >
> > > Knowing that you were running an AMD K6/500 with 128MB RAM, I am
> > > curious about what drives you are using.
> > >
> > > Did this setup include mail, data, and httpd all on one server?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Keith
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: George Toft <george@georgetoft.com>
> > > To: <plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us>
> > > Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 10:16 PM
> > > Subject: Re: Virtual Hosting
> > >
> > > > We did 1800 sites on 30 IP's - what's the big deal? We found
> the
> > > > practical limit to Apache's ability to serve virtuals was about
> > > > 240 URL's. This was due to the fact that we ran out of file
> > > > descriptors, which required either recompiling the kernel (not
> at
> > > > 3:30am when we found the problem) or stop logging access,
> errors,
> > > > referrers, and agents. We then started logging just access and
> > > error,
> > > > and the next problem was all these cgi gurus on the virtual
> accounts
> > > > that kept dragging down the server, but that was after we
> approached
> > > > 300 virtuals on 1 IP on one AMD K6/500 with 128MB RAM.
> > > >
> > > > George
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Keith Smith wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Check this guys email.
> > > > >
> > > > > 477 sites on 2 IP's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> > > > >
> > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > From: sweetgrass <zen2now@qwest.net>
> > > > > To: <plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us>
> > > > > Sent: Friday, January 05, 2001 10:23 PM
> > > > > Subject: Re: Virtual Hosting
> > > > >
> > > > > > i assume you are speaking of web hosting. the reason i ask,
> is
> > > > > because we
> > > > > > host in house as well co-locate, but use virtual hosts with
> > > apache
> > > > > and
> > > > > > virtual ip's with IIS (M$'s definition), and trust me you
> will
> > > want
> > > > > to use
> > > > > > virtual hosts if you are hosting more than 30 sites. at our
> > > co-lo we
> > > > > are
> > > > > > serving up more than 477 sites on 2 ip's, so you can
> understand
> > > why
> > > > > virtual
> > > > > > hosting is so important. it makes maintaining zones a cake
> walk.
> > > > > apache.org
> > > > > > should lead you in the right direction,
> > > > > > and if you choose the lesser platform M$ can help. also
> > > o'reily's
> > > > > has a
> > > > > > great book to start out with.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > slr
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > > From: "John Albee" <john@empresamexicana.com>
> > > > > > To: "PLUG" <plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us>
> > > > > > Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 1971 5:08 PM
> > > > > > Subject: Virtual Hosting
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > We are in the process of converting our websites to our
> own
> > > > > servers
> > > > > > instead
> > > > > > > of virtual hosting for our sites. My question is about
> how to
> > > get
> > > > > it
> > > > > > setup
> > > > > > > to work like the virtual servers in terms of ftp and
> system
> > > users.
> > > > > I
> > > > > > would
> > > > > > > much rather do this than something like NFS and in case we
> > > ever do
> > > > > offer
> > > > > > > virtual hosting, I want it to be accessible in the same
> way as
> > > any
> > > > > other
> > > > > > > virtual server.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > > > John Albee
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
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