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Introduction
"No Cost" Option:
Use web.mit.edu
"Some Cost" Option:
Run a content-less webserver
"Some Cost" Option:
Let W91 do it
"Last Resort" Option:
Do-it-yourself
Webserver management essentials
Useful links
Example: webmail.mit.edu
About me
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Last Resort: Do It Yourself
First, get an Athena locker so you can have a persistent URL and a nice, backed-up
place to keep your website.
Then, see if you can use web.mit.edu to serve the website. If you can,
you don't need to run your own webserver.
To make a dedicated system on which to put a production webserver, you have to know
how to find, build, test, debug, build again, and manage changes for the software
components that go into the webserver. My general approach is:
- Get an Athena locker so you can have a persistent url for your website, and
a nice, backed-up place to keep your website
- Get a CNAME to use for the webserver name (don't use the actual ANAME, you will
regret it)
- Get an appropriately-sized system and install Athena on it
- Make any modifications for special disks, filesystems, set the root password, etc.
- Run approproate 'mkserv' options
- Verify that all basic sysadmin tasks are done: startup, shutdown, backup, etc.
- Add the webserver in its own tree (e.g., /var/whatever, don't install it with
some parts in /usr, some in /etc, some in root, etc. You want to KNOW where everything is
when it comes time to update. That is, don't use the default installation paths, always
specify where you want to install things. Tinker with the configuration until you get it
right
- For a complicated webserver, I will build it, test it, and tinker with its config
files gradually, starting with a simple webserver, verify that it works, then adding
one component at a time and tinkering, verifying, starting over as necessary, until the
whole thing is done.
- If you are using the apache-ssl locker,
install things exactly as instructed in the locker
- Add your webpages, try it out, watch for errors, fix them
- Figure out how to roll old one out of service, new one in, and how to roll back
if things don't work as expected
- Generate daily and weekly reports to show usage
- Verify that all sysadmin tasks are done and work as expected: startup, shutdown,
backup, log-rolling, report-generating, system monitoring, etc.
- Keep up with security advisories, apply fixes, and keep all software and hardware
up to date
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