The Amazing, Incredible 12 Hour Daemon Configuration!
Brief intro:
So here's how it started. A couple of friends of mine have their own gaming clan, for stuff like Counter-Strike, BattleField 2, Half-Life 2, etc. So one day, they decide to go online and get their own website. Now, they aren't lusers or anything; they're all more capable with computers than about 90% of the rest of the school. However, due to my default position as "guy-who-does-computer-stuff", I was chosen to create, for them, the awesomest gaming clan site ever. They were even planning to host it on their own server. So, they picked out a domain name (www.afrodj.org) and they gave me a box with a vanilla Fedora Core 7 installation on it. Sw33t and l33t. I picked out a CMS to use(PHP-Fusion). I shall now present the rest in recipe format.
You Will Need:
One(1) Windows box, connected to the internet and capable of burning CDs.
A Linux box, with screen, keyboard and mouse attached.
A CD-RW for transferring info between the 2 computers. (the linux box couldn't connect to the 'net.)
Patience.
Method:
1. I started at about 1 pm on Sunday, in the GMT +8 time zone. My first act was to download the tar.gz files for Apache, MySQL, PHP and PHP-Fusion. Then I burnt them to the CD-RW.
2. I slotted the CD-RW into the linux box, and extracted the sources into my home directory. I went for the standard ./configure, make, sudo make install. Hmm. Apache AND MySQL aren't configured properly. DAMN IT!
3. I decided to switch distros, because I wasn't familiar with FC. So, I installed Ubuntu 6.10 from a disc I had lying around. That was when I discovered that Apache, MySQL and PHP have a load of configuration options that I forgot.
4. Same process for installation, except with a LOAD of configuration options. Yet somehow, it worked.
5. God, making these sources takes ages. MySQL took at least an hour.
6. Ah, excellent. The default index.html is served perfectly. I edited httpd.conf
7. Copy the PHP-Fusion files to /usr/local/apache2/htdocs, replacing index.html with index.php.
8. Hmm. The computer won't let me do it.
9. After a lot of chmodding, the computer lets me copy the files.
10. Fire up Firefox and go to http://localhost/setup.php.
11. Oh dear, I forgot to go to mysqladmin and create a database!
12. One database creation later, and I'm back onto firefox.
13. PHP-Fusion installation continues flawlessly. That's a change.
14. Yay! It all works. Now, to delete setup.php and chmod config.php back to 644.
15. Grueling task of adding users for all the members in the clan. Apparently, the clan's Head Coonie wants only people approved by the super-admins (me and him) to join.
16. And, just to round it off, the creation of afrodj_server_init.sh, a shell script that starts up MySQL and Apache.
17. I looked up at the clock and said "HOLY CRAP!" Lo and behold, it's one o'clock in the morning, on monday.
YAY!