Re: OT: (Web) server administration advice

[J Martin Rushton]

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Option 1) Can you run a VM within your VPS?  Some systems work, others
throw a fit if you try it.  If it does work, then you can build and
model your desired main system within the VM.

Option 2) A basic development machine like a Raspberry Pi will give
you a machine to play with.

Option 3) Will your home machine run up a VM?  You only need to access
it from your real machine for test purposes.

Whatever option you choose I would recommend for the long term getting
to grips with "raw" Linux.  With 10 years under your belt you ought to
know all the basics, use the various fora and man pages to flesh out
your knowledge.  Even consider buying "dead tree" documentation - £50
on a good book will quickly repay itself, it's less than an hour's
chargeout time.

The web server ought to be virtually out-of-the-box and all distros
come with some sort of mail server: postfix is generally easier than
sendmail.

HTH, Martin

On 26/06/15 21:34, Urs Liska wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm in (some) need for feedback regarding the complexity of (web)
> server administration. I am running a "virtual private server",
> which is a virtual machine in a server of an ISP's server farm. So
> I "own" root access to a full Debian installation, with all
> responsibility for it but also all possibilities.
> 
> This server is "managed" by Plesk, a comprehensive server
> administration tool. This has probably helped me a lot getting
> everything to run in the first place, but by now I'm rather annoyed
> by the fact that it does so many things "the Plesk way" instead of
> sticking to proven Linux ways. It significantly interferes with
> domain and web server management, provides its own mechanism to
> install "apps" etc. As a result it obscures away tons of things and
> makes it very hard to find documentation and assistance for more or
> less default tasks such as configuring virtual hosts on Apache (to
> make web apps like Gitlab work).
> 
> By now I'm so annoyed that I consider changing this and "falling
> back" to a plain Linux server. But OTOH I'm reluctant to do so
> because then I would *have* to do everything on my own, presumably
> all on the command line and without the convenient web interface.
> So is anybody able to give me an estimate how big the risks are
> that I end up with a system that doesn't do what I need at all?
> Well, the basic things I'd need to set up properly are - web
> server - a small number of domains and a bigger number of
> subdomains - mail server and accounts - mailman This is what I
> would rely on having set up more or less instantly in order to
> avoid outage. Everything else, from Git server and LilyPond 
> building over dynamic DNS or whatever could wait and accept to be
> more hassle-like.
> 
> I am by now a rather seasoned Linux user, having installed,
> maintained and used my installations on several computers for
> nearly 10 years. I have administered my current server through the
> SSH console to some extent already. But of course I'm far from
> being a competent sysadmin.
> 
> I know this is extremely hard to tell for anyone else. But maybe
> you *do* have some comments for me that might help me deciding
> whether to go in that direction or not.
> 
> Best Urs
> 
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