[Sussex] An introduction and Apache

[Steve Dobson]

Hi Will

And as others have already said, welcome to the list.

I have been a member of this group since it's relaunch around 9 years
ago.  As I now work from home I made the decision to give up the car a
couple of years ago; it just wasn't paying it's way.  The only
unfortunate result is that getting to a meeting is now much more
difficult.  But I have been a reasonable active member of the mail-list
over the years and have tried to help where I can.

On 15/06/11 20:08, Will Earnshaw wrote:
> Hey everyone!
> 
>     I'm Will. I run an Ubuntu Server 10.04 box remotely and I am still
> getting to grips with everything. It's currently in a room in my house
> but eventually I hope to out source to a cloud computing server. As such
> everything I do involves wrestling with the command line, (not always a
> fun thing to do!). It would be great to get to know people in the local
> area who are also involved with this sort of thing!

I think I can be of help here.  I run Debian rather than Ubuntu, so
apart from the odd package here and there, and the repositories used to
get the packages, a lot of my knowledge may be useful to you.

As for the command line I think I'm not blowing by own trumpet too much
when I say that I know a thing or three (maybe even four :-).  I first
used Unix in 1985 as a student, on a VAX 11/750 running BSD 4.2.  I have
been using Unix, and now Linux, professionally since graduating in 1988.
 There is a part of me that firmly believes that the mouse is a device
that is used to direct the keyboard input into the appropriate command
terminal. Well maybe it is useful for moving and re-sizing the command
terminals too, but not much else.  ;-D

> I hear that recently you had a talk on the command line. Trust me to
> join just too late! I could have really used that meeting.
> I'm still learning but eventually I want to be involved in computer
> programming, and will happily contribute (as I may) to any open projects
> you are running or are involved with.  I can also write webpages using
> PHP but haven't really sat down to do any major project with it yet.
> I'm currently working on a java game that will run in a webpage, its a
> card battling and trading game a little like magic the gathering but
> that's another story!

I've used PHP in the past to develop websites, but these days I'm using
Java's J2EE & JBoss - it is a little more complex than PHP but I prefer
the restrictions and controls is requires to get the job done.  As a
professional software developer I find those beneficial to the long term
maintenance of the code base.

> I've recently installed Apache web server and managed to get it to run
> several websites that I own. However, I've noticed that when you type a
> directory into the url bar (i.e. www.example.co.uk/main/) it shows an
> FTP like read out of the files within that directory, including the
> behind the scenes php scripts. Is it possible to stop it doing this?
> The other thing I don't like it doing is it reports that its apache, and
> tells the user the version of Ubuntu it's sitting on. I don't suppose
> there's any real harm in that, but I'm not really comfortable about
> giving away so much information.
> 
> I'm sure at some point my server will be attacked, and its only then
> will I learn how to keep it secure. But I'm very paranoid about the
> little things I notice myself.

I have some more things to add to the points others have already made,
but it would be better for the search engines if I replied to their
comments.  So keep an eye out for some more posts from me.

> P.S. I've never used a mailing list before, so hopefully this all works!

Not only did it work, but you followed the Netiquette rules of conduct -
so you get full marks from me.

Steve
-- 
Steve "Dobbo" Dobson