hail-hail

Hi folks, I have just bought and installed (lol plugged in) a new pc. I will have broadband in the next week.
Knowing that broadband is always on, I want to build my own web site and mail server on my onw pc.

I have registered a domain name that I want.
I have broadband.

I want to build a web site on my pc, is this possible?
I want to set up a mail server and mail for my domain name on my pc, is this possible?

Ideally I want to know if teh above is possible, what software I will need and how to go about getting started

suba

have you got a fxed IP with your broadband? if yes, then instruct your domain company to point the mx records to that IP address.

Iain

Hi,

I had the very same idea last december.

I signed up with plusnet who allow me a fixed Ip address.
Registered two domains via freeparking.co.uk who also allowed me to setup my dns entries to point to that fixed ip.

I setup a Via EPIA system with redhat 9.0 for my email and web server.
(Postfix for email, apache for web server)
In the house I have a netgear wireless/router/modem/firewall and have configured it to allow port 25 and 80 to go to my linux box.

You can get all of the things you want up and running, the downfall is the speed of you're web server for outside home access.

Depends what broadband you have. If it is ADSL then yes you get 512K download speed, but you only get 200K upload.

This is slow when running a home web server.

I was thinking about going for one of the broadband service s that offer 400K upload, by cost was too much.

Hope this helps.

hail-hail

Thaks Suba, I spotted an additional charge of £2 per month for a permanent IP address. I will set this up.

Presumably that will send anyone who types in my url straight to my machine.
Where do I put my html files?
What about security, if someone knows my ip address, can they just hack into my machine?

Iain

Drop me a PM if I can help.

Iain

hail-hail

Thanks Iain, will do, but I warn you, i will have a virtual mountains worth of questions

Iain

Thats ok, I used to work in tech support for a computer design group.
The questions were mega technical and generally from non-english speaking countries ;-)

hail-hail

I am scottish you know, so language still may be a barrier

ozzy

You need to manage your registered domain name and have the DNS entry for the WWW reference assigned to your IP address. This points www.whatever.com to your static IP address.

You can use stuff like Dynamic DNS to do the same, but for dynamically assigned IP addresses. Yo register with them and the manage your DNS entry. Any changes to you IP address and their client updates their database and the DNS entry. I use this myself @ home. You can use it FOC if you pick one of their domains or pay a subscription for a proper registered domain name.

As has been mentioned you need to add an MX (Mail Exchange) entry which tells other mail servers where the servers are that host your domain (mail only). Most ISP's will offer mail hosting where they receive all your e-mail first and then you can download mail periodically (whenever really). The benefit is that if you're offline, mail will get stored until your server is back. If you host everything yourself then messages will just get bounced after the senders server gives up trying.

You can then use a firewall to port forward http (80) and SMTP (25) to an internal server.

Stefan

ozzy

Oh, if you want to check/test things then basic ping and tracert commands will check DNS resolution and routes to a server.

nslookup will perform an MX record lookup to test mail records

e.g. to test the sidc.co.uk mail domain, do this from an XP/NT/W2K prompt:-

nslookup
set type=MX
sidc.co.uk

Results should be:-

sidc.co.uk MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mail.sidc.co.uk
sidc.co.uk nameserver = ns2.titanhosts.net
sidc.co.uk nameserver = ns1.titanhosts.net
mail.sidc.co.uk internet address = 194.93.140.153
ns2.titanhosts.net internet address = 194.93.140.152
ns1.titanhosts.net internet address = 194.93.140.151

type exit to come out of the utility

Stefan

suba

if you dont have fixed IP, you can use dynamic DNS. have a look at a FAQ here --> http://www.btofaq.net/articles/servers.html