Hy ...

After a lot of Cobalt RaQ experiences,
I'm moving to other dedicated machines...

My questions:

What linux distributions do you use?
Which install options? (rpm's,..)

Greetings,

FiberOptic

The most common one seems to be Red Hat. Anyone know why that is? Anyhow, that's what I've got on my box. I'm looking at two other companies for a probable switch, and they both have Red Hat too.

It seems that it's pretty complete and you don't need additional packages. At least my box isn't using any additional package. Well, on second thought, I've got Webmin and that might have been an addon, but I'm not sure.

Most control panels require Red Hat. :(

Because, RedHat is like : LIQUID ELECTRICITY!

Its ALIVE!

There are enough serious users of it that care about it being a spot on system it has been designed to work, its also versitile dont forget so it gets used for many apps non webhosting related and has carried its reputation through some other channels. Although I dare say its reliability and stability in the hosting kind of cements its obligation to the market.

RH 7.2 + Plesk 2.51

I install a basic redhat system and setup the networking.

Then I copy the /RedHat/RPMS/ directories from the CD's to the directory /RPMS/ on the harddrive.

Then I run this script to prep for Plesk:

rpm -Uvh /RPMS/xinetd-2.3.3-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/libxml2-2.4.2-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/libxml2-devel-2.4.2-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/libcap-1.10-5.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/libcap-devel-1.10-5.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/gd-1.8.4-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/gd-devel-1.8.4-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/curl-7.8-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/curl-devel-7.8-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/apache-1.3.20-16.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/bind-9.1.3-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/bind-utils-9.1.3-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/binutils-2.11.90.0.8-9.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/mod_perl-1.24_01-3.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/mod_ssl-2.8.4-9.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/mysql-3.23.41-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/mysql-devel-3.23.41-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/mysql-server-3.23.41-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/ntp-4.1.0-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/openssl-0.9.6b-8.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/openssl095a-0.9.5a-11.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-5.6.0-17.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/php-4.0.6-7.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/php-imap-4.0.6-7.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/php-mysql-4.0.6-7.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/shadow-utils-20000902-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/textutils-2.0.14-2.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/stunnel-3.19-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-libnet-1.0703-6.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/webalizer-2.01_06-11.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-DBI-1.18-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-DBD-MySQL-1.2216-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-Digest-MD5-2.13-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-HTML-Parser-3.25-2.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-HTML-Tagset-3.03-3.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-libwww-perl-5.53-3.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-MIME-Base64-2.12-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-Storable-0.6.11-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh /RPMS/perl-URI-1.12-5.noarch.rpm

Then I install Plesk.

Other than setting up RedHat I can install Plesk and the RPM's in about 10 minutes flat. Give or take.

I use Slackware. I think it works well in a hosting environment. But maybe thats just me. A lot of people would argue that FreeBSD is the only choice. Maybe that is why I use Slack, as it is a close to bsd-ish like init scripts as linux distros get, I don't know. It all comes down to how happy and comfortable a distro makes you feel.

As far as packages go: Pretty much all of A (well only one kernel), AP and D. And most of the N disk as well (networking). Pretty small install overall. Install checkinstall and go bananas. If you want a pretty looking system interface: wget http://webmin.com/download/webmin-0.970.tar.gz, ./configure, make, checkinstall.

Regards,

Jeff