For a hosting company

[hosler]

I plan on buying the TekTonic UM1 package to start a small webhosting company. I would be using DirectAdmin for the control panel. I just want to know, which distrobution I should use? I would normally use FreeBSD for this situation, but TekTonic nor unixshell# offers this. However, I do use Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, so I won't be at a complete loss when dealing with a Linux server. From your experience, which Linux distrobution do you think I would feel most comfortable with?

[americantechie]

If you are comfortable with Ubuntu I would consider Debian because that distro is much more mature than Ubuntu. I also prefer the Debian packaging system over the RPM based packaging systems of systems such as Fedora.

[hosler]

Yes, I just ordered a Deb server from Tektonik. Could anyone link me to a nice guide to setup a name server for my webhosting company?

[americantechie]

Well first of all I wouldn't run a webhosting company, it is not worth it. There are thousands of other people out there just like you who are doing the same thing and you are probably not going to make enough money to overcome the headache that something like this could be. :D

You might consider an account with Dnsmadeeasy (http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/) rather than setup your own DNS. They claim 100% uptime for their DNS servers and they offer things like monitoring, DNS failover, and load balancing. That means you will get an alert when your server goes down and they can automatically switch your server. You could get another Xen account with another provider to serve as a mirror. You can also move to another server in less than a minute rather than having to wait hours for a nameserver change to propagate through the system.

They are kind of spendy. One year of services for 25 accounts will run you $60 but I think it would be well worth it for a hosting company. Texdrive uses this service as well.

Otherwise, if you are not real savvy with Linux I would consider just running Cpanel because that system takes alot of the guesswork out of the admin for you. Even DA is for people who are a little more savvy.

[americantechie]

Oh... and to answer your questions...

Debian network admin guide... there is a section on Bind... read it

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/network-administrator/

Securing your Debian server...

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/index.en.html

Another guide that I use except it is more geared towards Redhat...

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/

[hosler]

cool thanks. this company im trying to start isnt really for the money. I will be using the server for personal use, and I will be hosting a few websites to help pay for server. Right now im using everydns.net for nameservers. I have a server running at my house with FreeBSD on it, but my network is really slow, so i switched to tektonik. I have been running a server on and off for about 3 years now. Do you really think I should go with cpanel over directadmin? The only experience i have with cpanel is when I had it on a webhost account. Direct Admin is looking really appealing to me right now.

[americantechie]

Well I am not a guru on this subject so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Wikipedia has a great explanation of why Cpanel might be useful for you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpanel

Cpanel basically takes care of admin and security. If you are lacking in either area, this could spell big problems for you, your hosted web sites, and if you are lacking in security you could inadvertantly cause problems for everyone around you. If I am hosting commercial sites that are not my own, I go with a solution that I trust more than I trust my own knowledge of Linux network admin.

You might think of Cpanel as a dynamic template that takes care of most aspects of admin for web hosting. You just install it and then all you have to keep updated is Cpanel (so you don't have to worry about updating and patching things like Apache, PHP, MYSQL and other services.) As you might imagine this type of setup is trading management for control. Cpanel manages everything for you, but you get less control over what you can do. The other drawback is that Cpanel uses quite a bit more resources than DA.

Direct admin is more of a graphical interface... kind of like Webmin. It manages little for you, but you get more control and it uses less resources. People that use Directadmin probably wouldn't even need it except to have a control panel available for customers and clients.

Personally I am not using a control panel because I am not going to host customers on this server. Currently I have a Cpanel Virtuozzo VPS and I am using my Xen VPS and a sandbox. In the future I might move all my sites to my Xen server and mirror it with another server just in case things go south.

If in doubt as a webhosting company, I would go with Cpanel. In fact I would probably go with a managed VPS with TekTonic if you are really unsure.

[matta]

For Debian I would give VHCS or DirectAdmin a try. Debian + cPanel = a total mess.

[americantechie]

[QUOTE=matta]For Debian I would give VHCS or DirectAdmin a try. Debian + cPanel = a total mess.[/QUOTE]

...which must be why some VPS providers do not offer Debian. I am guessing that Cpanel works best with Fedora or similar.

Going back to our original discussion... if you go with Cpanel it really does not matter what distro you are comfortable with because Cpanel takes over. If you are going with DA you want to pick a distro that you know well. In any case it is best to choose a distro that is proven to be solid for web hosting.

Or in my case I am not hosting anything but my own stuff and I don't care what happens to it. I am actually running Ubuntu for this reason.

[hosler]

My Debian VPS came with apache and proftpd allready installed. Sould I remove these before isntalling DA?

[hosler]

Also, I currently use everydns.net for my domains. Does DirectAdmin work well even if I dont host my own nameservers?

[americantechie]

Direct Admin will work fine a managed DNS and no nameservers running on your own system. In fact I have my managed DNS pointing to my Xen system and other VPS with Cpanel and they both work great. When the users arrive at your IP address, Apache then directs the traffic to whatever URL is requested.

I was going to setup my Xen server on Debian but I have since had a change of mind. I think CentOS is actually the best distro to run a webhost on. CentOS is an Enterprise system based off RHE and like RHE has SELinux embedded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux