I'm looking into getting a RaQ 4i server from rackshack.net and was wondering if you guys could fill me in on some of the following info:

1) I'm only going to be hosting about 20 Domains with maybe 10-20 pages and emails for each. Is this ok? Will it slow the server down a lot? How many Domains can you ideally host with the RaQ 4i and how many concurrent connections can it handle?

2) Is it possible to setup MySQL and Java Servelets on this server? Is it hard? I have no clue about linux. Then, can I decide which host can use or cannot use these services or any other ones in the future?

Thanks!

-Abbas

Hi

1) yes it can easily handle 20 domains, afaik it can handle 200, and as for concurrent connections, im not sure, maybe someone else could enlighten us :)

2) yes MySQL can be setup on a RaQ, a friend set it up for me in less than 5 mins so maybe reading a little literature first and you could set it up easily, i think its based on RedHat if i remember rightly so the RH RPM files would work?, or am i wrong? if they do the RPM files for automated installs can be found at www.rpmfind.net

Aloha, go here

http://pkg.nl.cobalt.com/
there is a MySQL package there for the RaQ

and directions for MySQL and asp here :
http://pkg.nl.cobalt.com/howto/
http://pkg.nl.cobalt.com/howto/casp_mysql_howto.html

not sure about concurent connections either ?

as for your other questions sounds like xstrike answered what I know
ya can try here for more:
http://www.cobalt.com/support/kb/

Thanks for the info guys!

Any idea on the Jave Servlets bit?

Thanks
Abbas

One more question:

Can I use this server as a nameserver for another server with another provider?

I'm thinking of taking this RaQ4 from rackshack.net and another dedicated Win2000 drom EUCI.com so can I use this RaQ to be the name server for my Windows 2000 hosted Domains as well?

Is that a good idea or something I should prevent or something not possible?

Thanks
-Abbas

let me know how the ecui server goes if you get it ??

well you could use it as a name server but if rackshack goes down you will not reach your other site ?

what about using a dns service ??
how many domains you have to point ??


thought ecui had a private service for dns ???

For JSP and Servlets goto - http://www.cobalt.com/java/

Thanks for all the info guys.

I should be setting up the two servers sometime at the end of the month or beginning of July

-Abbas

MySQL and JDK installation went smoothly- thanks to everyone!

I have another question regarding email: Can different domains on the same server have a same username for email? I mean, can I create a user called abc for 123.com and xyz.com that are on the same RaQ4 server? I read that this wasn;t possible on RaQ3 but is it a limitation of RaQ4 as well?

Also, what's a good place to get more stuff for the RaQ server?

Thanks
Abbas

It is a linux limitation. What you'd do is create abc2 for the other doain and alias abc2 with 'abc'.

As for more 'stuff' heh.. well it is bacially a RedHat linux box, so more or less anything that you can find for RedHat linux, would work (more or less).

What I was wondering was that if I resell the domain accounts with each client having their control panel, then it would sort of be a problem if one client wants to create an email address that is already taken by another client of the same name!

Does RaQ accept the "@" when creating a user account? If so, then I can just tell clients to name their users name@domain.com which would solve all problems

Thanks
-Abbas

It isn't a problem, just that there cannot be two users on thesame server with the same name. Aliases are used in either case.

They can alias 'sales1234' with 'sales' thus giving them sales@domain.com, or for a catch-all, they would alias 'sales1234' (or whatever user name you set up for them) by entering '@www.domain.com' (note the www part, which is needed for it to work properly)

Thanks Chicken!

One thing that is a little unclear is- do you create the @www.domain.com as an alias or as a user. I mean

1) Create a user called abc and then an alias for it called @www.abc.com

or

2) Simply create a user called @www.abc.com

Thanks
Abbas

That would be the alias (choice #1 above). In the user's alias field, you can enter things such as:

webmaster
chicken
sales
@www.domain.com
billybob

Thanks again! One more confusion I'm facing on setting up email is the following scenario:

on www.domain.com, we have user1 and user2

The way I want to have it setup, it should be such that if someone sends an email to user1@domain.com, it should be received by:

user1@domain.com
user2@domain.com
and the @www.domain.com catchall user

Lastly, for all virtual domains, I was reading somewhere that you have to send an email to user@host.domain.com instead of the preferably user@domain.com

Is this true? Or does the @www.domain.com trick you taught me earlier take care of this

Thanks again for your help!

-Abbas

The way I want to have it setup, it should be such that if someone sends an email to user1@domain.com, it should be received by:

user1@domain.com
user2@domain.com
and the @www.domain.com catchall user

The aliases control the inbound direction of the mail, what is delivered to which box. The catch-all isn't a user. It is basically saying that anything *besides* a username that is setup will be caught and delivered to the user that the catch-all is set up on. I doubt setting up two users and having an alias of @www.domain.com in both would work. I don't see a way to deliver the catch-all mail to both users (other than using an email client filter which would forward a copy to the other user automatically, which is a possible solution).


Lastly, for all virtual domains, I was reading somewhere that you have to send an email to user@host.domain.com instead of the preferably user@domain.com

Is this true? Or does the @www.domain.com trick you taught me earlier take care of this

This issue is one you can take care of in the CP when you set up the site on the server. This differs slightly from a RaQ3 to a RaQ4, but since you mentioned you were looking at a 4i, we'll use that as the example.

When you set up the site, there will be two fields that you should pay attention to. Typically, you set up a domain and enter 'www' as the hostname, so that the server resolved www.domain.com . You also want (in most cases) to alias that with just the domain.com for both email and for view web pages. This tells the server that if I type in domain.com, I get www.domain.com and if I send email to @domain.com it gets sent to the users that I set up in www.domain.com .

Why the heck is it like this? Well, 'www' is only one possible hostname. You could offer a client subdomain.domain.com and they could get email sent as:

username@subdomain.domain.com

Basically, you just have to tell it to do what you want, and if you don't, it assumes that you only want www.domain.com to resolve and email: username@www.domain.com to work.

Really long way of saying, be sure to enter 'domain.com' in these two fields, except for a subdomain other than 'www'.

Originally posted by Chicken
[i]]I don't see a way to deliver the catch-all mail to both users

My bad...I dont think I'm clarifying the issue. Let me give you a real world example. Currently, we have a client called indigo trading and we have setup a domain for them called indigo-uae.com

There is one person in the company who tavels a lot and likes to check his email from outside the company LAN. So we made a personal mailbox for him and gave it the option to store the mail in his inbox as well as forward a copy to the catch-all mailbox.

Thus, he gets the email on his company LAN as well as a copy on his personal account, which he can access from anywhere

We had them as a virtual host at host pro and it was possible to do this there, but I'm not familiar with the way RaQ works and was wondering if its possible to do this?

Thanks again
-Abbas

Originally posted by AbbasJaffarali
... drom EUCI.com .....

Did you mean EUCI.com. That seems to be a site for the power industry.
I was curious where you were looking for an NT box.
Gary

Whoops!

Mis-Spellin...that should be ECUI.COM

Thanks
Abbas

Abbas, I'm not entirely sure what you are doing but basically your options for a user's POP box are (and I mean you can do any of these in combination, nothing more):

...say username set up on the domain is 'billy'

1) alias 'billy' with multiple names (sales, bobby, etc.)
2) alias 'billy' with a catch-all (@www.domain.com)
3) forward 'billy' and/or #1 and/or #2 to another address on the machine, or another address off the machine (billy@yahoo.com)

I'm still confused.

Scenario:
I get Rackshack RAQ. I resell the space as a virtual hosting service.

I have 2 clients.
Bob and Mike with their domain names www.bob.com and www.mike.com

If Bob wants to setup an email account webmaster@bob.com and mike wants to setup up an email account webmaster@mike.com will there be a problem? I may just be illiterate or dyslexic, but from what I'm reading in this thread, this cannot be done. Apparently, only one there can only be 1 webmaster on the entire server, no matter if they're totally different domain names.

If webmaster@bob.com exists on my rackshack raq, webmaster@mike.com can not be created?

Originally posted by big_smooth
I'm still confused.

Scenario:
I get Rackshack RAQ. I resell the space as a virtual hosting service.

I have 2 clients.
Bob and Mike with their domain names www.bob.com and www.mike.com

If Bob wants to setup an email account webmaster@bob.com and mike wants to setup up an email account webmaster@mike.com will there be a problem? I may just be illiterate or dyslexic, but from what I'm reading in this thread, this cannot be done. Apparently, only one there can only be 1 webmaster on the entire server, no matter if they're totally different domain names.

If webmaster@bob.com exists on my rackshack raq, webmaster@mike.com can not be created?

Aloha
here is how you would do it you would have to tell them to setup there username with something like
bob.webm and then have him use an alias that is webmaster and then it will work

mike would have to setup
mke.webm
and make an alias that is called webmaster

if you have people signup for accounts try to have them use the first 3 letters or assign them a code you choose of whatever you decide I use a 3 letter code realating to the website
WebHostingTalk
would be code wht.

hope this helps