Hosting kids websites internally with iis or apache

[goodhead]

we want to allow the kids to upload via ftp their asp and php websites to an internal server for testing purposes.

 

Whats the best way to go about this?

 

If i have dirs on the server for the few kids. How do i go about securing the folders from other kids.

 

I also want to install mysql on there. How do i allow each kid to logon to mysql individually and only see there own database which i would setup.

 

 

Dan

[contink]

I'm sure someone will give a full on detailed description of how to accomplish most of this but first off I'd set aside a separate machine for this with about 512mb - 1Gb of RAM.

 

Some form of Control panel would undoubtedly reduce the administrative overhead for you so something like webmin (webadmin) would be a must...

 

As to security, I'd recommend going with Apache2 as that runs processes under the specific user rather than the old system of a single "nobody" user. Ideally you should create virtual servers for each child, a username for each and chown their www directories to that user with usual 644 access perms.

 

Most of what you need to know is in the Apache documentation but overall I'd think long and hard about grabbing a commercial control panel like Cpanel or Plesk to help manage it all as it'll cut down the amount of administration required as well as book time you'd need to figure it all out.

 

Hope that helps as an initial idea.

[goodhead]

I'm sure someone will give a full on detailed description of how to accomplish most of this but first off I'd set aside a separate machine for this with about 512mb - 1Gb of RAM.

 

Some form of Control panel would undoubtedly reduce the administrative overhead for you so something like webmin (webadmin) would be a must...

 

As to security, I'd recommend going with Apache2 as that runs processes under the specific user rather than the old system of a single "nobody" user. Ideally you should create virtual servers for each child, a username for each and chown their www directories to that user with usual 644 access perms.

 

Most of what you need to know is in the Apache documentation but overall I'd think long and hard about grabbing a commercial control panel like Cpanel or Plesk to help manage it all as it'll cut down the amount of administration required as well as book time you'd need to figure it all out.

 

Hope that helps as an initial idea.

 

If i use appache, can i host both asp and php from that?

[Geoff]

Yes.

 

http://www.apache-asp.org/

http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET

[ConTheITGuy]

I'd think long and hard about grabbing a commercial control panel like Cpanel .....

 

I'm pretty sure cPanel do a very cheap (if not free) license for academic institutions. However, the server has to have a public IP address

 

Maybe useful to some folks - not to me, unfortunately.

 

 

Andy

[Geoff]

Try RavenCore instead of cPanel. It's GPL.

 

http://www.ravencore.com

[contink]

Try RavenCore instead of cPanel. It's GPL.

 

http://www.ravencore.com

 

Hadn't heard of that one... Always useful to see something new.

[webman]

We did a similar thing, here are some notes on my wiki.

[ZeroHour]

As to security, I'd recommend going with Apache2 as that runs processes under the specific user rather than the old system of a single "nobody" user. Ideally you should create virtual servers for each child, a username for each and chown their www directories to that user with usual 644 access perms.

Pretty sure that only applies to linux btw.

We would not really ever allow pupils to do php/asp as it gives you to many ways to probe the network with code, but serving html would be okay (to a point). Also they could write a simple script to ping your servers to death (there are ways around this such as max execution time in php but its a example)

NOTE: network! not the server its hosted on generally.

[Geoff]

Heh, that's why you put it in the DMZ.

[ZeroHour]

Heh, that's why you put it in the DMZ.

Always good to tell him to do that though

Its a big risk if you dont

[contink]

As to security, I'd recommend going with Apache2 as that runs processes under the specific user rather than the old system of a single "nobody" user. Ideally you should create virtual servers for each child, a username for each and chown their www directories to that user with usual 644 access perms.

Pretty sure that only applies to linux btw.

 

Correct... windoze permissions would be a whole other kettle of fish.