/ME: Are you doing the name services for it? Will you be hosting their email as well?
$ADMIN: “Yes. Yes.”
/ME: OK, edit /etc/named.conf, copy this stanza [refers to a boilerplate zonefile] and change that name. Then restart the name service. You should be able to ping it now.
$ADMIN: (typing, pause) “I can ping it.”
/ME: Good. Edit /etc/postfix/virtual, add these two lines ["$DOMAIN VIRTUAL" and "@$DOMAIN $USERNAME@bigpond.com"] and reindex the file with “postmap virtual”. You should be able to send a test email now.
$ADMIN: (some typing and clicking) “All right, that’s come through.”
/ME: Excellent. Now make a new directory /var/www/virtual/www.$DOMAIN and copy the website pages into it. [the Apache in question is set up for dynamic virtual hosting; that and a wildcard A-record make new subdomains that easy]
$ADMIN: (typing) “OK, I’ve done that.”
/ME: Point a browser at it.
$ADMIN: “Oh. Is that all?” (big pause, punctuated by the occasional click) “Can you make some statistics with this?”
/ME: With Webalizer. Using a package called Webalizer.
$ADMIN: “Is it on this server?”
/ME: I don’t know. Type RPM dash queue webalizer and find out. That’s with a zed, all lower case.
$ADMIN: (typing) “It says ‘package webalizer is not installed’ ”
/ME: OK, type URPMI webalizer. If it gives you a list of packages, type wye and press Enter. If there’s only one, it’ll just install it.
$ADMIN: (typing) “It just installed it. Is that just downloaded, or do I need to run something to do the installation?”
/ME: It’s all done, ready to roll. You'll need to look at the config and tell it where to find the log files and where to put the statistics pages, but it’s all in there.
$ADMIN: “Oh. Pages? And where has it put the config?”
/ME: Pages. It makes web pages with the statistics in.
$ADMIN: “Oh.”
/ME: As for the config, ask it. Type RPM dash queue ell webalizer.
$ADMIN: “Oh.” (pause) “Oh... that was easy. Windows doesn’t have anything like this. What do these pages look like?”
/ME: Point your browser at $URL and have a look at a real one. It tells you what searches brought your visitors here, what pages they arrived at and left from, what browsers they’re using, the whole nine yards.
$ADMIN: “Oh.” (pause) “Oh. Very impressive. And I just type two words to get all of this?”
/ME: (smugly) Yes.
/ME: And if you”re sitting at the machine, or another Linux machine, you can type RPMdrake and then do it all point-and-click style, too. The machine sorts out any dependencies it might want and installs those as well.
$ADMIN: “Oh. Windows doesn’t have anything like that.”
Yer dern tootin’ it doesn’t — and can you imagine the licensing nightmare that would ensue if it did, and it all worked just like the rest of MS-Windows? Install mod_php... put in the licence key for mod_php, another one for PHP itself, another one for each of the libraries (GD, ImageMagick, Ming, OpenSSL, OpenLDAP, ...) do you have enough seats for each? Is this an academic or OEM version? Now more keys for Apache and any other modules you might want... mod_access? mod_ssl? mod_index? So it talks to PostgreSQL, key in a serial number for that. Do you have enough of these seats? Because you’re running a brace of dual-core processors, do you need to pay for four CPU licences, ort two, or is one enough? Will the installer automatically enforce the wrong one if the CPUs are AMD? Does a connection from PHP on the same machine use up a local or network seat? God forbid that any of these things should turn out to be “prohibited munitions” or the like. Where do you want to go today? No, sorry, we can’t legally install sufficient encryption for that. Oh, bugger, it’s reinstalled Outlook Express again and deleted all of the competing email clients... and bluescreened halfway through an install, so now the registry says that package is installed but it isn’t so all of its dependents are breaking... yeeEEAAARGH! (deploys axe, vigorously)
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