Initial Setup / Virtual Hosts | TurnKey GNU/Linux

Hello! I have dug around and not really finding the answers I need... I have previously been using WAMP and XAMPP and never really had issues with those. I now have VMware Server running on a Windows 2008 R2 machine. I have downloaded the TurnKey LAMP Stack appliance and it is up and running and running on my desired IP config. I can get to the welcome page (3 icons for webmin, phpmyadmin) and all that and getting into the webmin setup, but there's so many options its a little confusing, and externally I get website is unavailable. I am using dyndns for my hostname, and my router is pointing port 80 to the turnkey appliance IP and no issues there. My goal is to use virtual hosts which I have done with WAMP previously to have different installations of various CMS and photo galleries at my home server.

How do I copy the Joomla install files to a folder on the appliance? (I know there's a joomla appliance pre-built, but I need more than that)
How do I enable/edit virtual hosts so I can have joomla.whatever.com go to one folder, and gallery.whatever.com go to another folder within the docs folder?
Is there a way to create an FTP server built in so I can just copy files to the root of the docs folder?

I am VERY new to this product and only familiar with the previously mentioned so any assistance will be fantastic! Thank you so much in advance!

Kevin

Replies (5)

Some ideas...

Reply 1 2011-01-31

If you have your networking setup correctly then what you see by browsing to the appliance from the local network should give the same result as from offsite (ie over the net via the forwarded port 80). If it's not working double check your forwarding setup and your virtual networking (in VMware).

To your other questions:

I'm not sure, try doing a google search. I would suspect it's a case of downloadin a tarball and untaring it into the doc root (/var/www).
I'm not really familiar with apache vhosts but you could use the Webmin module or you can do it manually. Here and here are a couple of links from Google that may be useful. Just keep in mind that TKL v11.x appliances are based on Ubuntu Server 10.04 and you shouldn't go too far wrong with Google. Ubuntu forums are also very handy for generic things such as Apache config.
SFTP is enabled by default so if you use a client such as Filezilla you can create a bookmark in it to the doc root (as I mentioned above its /var/www by default). Just remember to make sure you use SFTP rather than FTP for the protocol or the connection will fail.

Apache config not my strong point

Reply 2 2011-02-10

Have you tried reusing your config file from WAMP? Assuming that the Apache version is the same (or close) then IMO it should work the same (but maybe not?). As for Webmin, I haven't spent a lot of time in there but I knew it had Apache config options in there.

If you would like to just manually configure it, I would suggest searching/posting on the Ubuntu forums.

Thank you for your reply!

Reply 3 2011-02-10

I think I have most of this figured out except for the virtual hosts... If there's an easy way through the Webmin, I would love to learn more about how I can accomplish this! The setup I had in WAMP as an example was to create a new database in phpmyadmin for each host and have each host pointing to a different folder. This gives the illusion of each host having a separate IP address and each host essentially has a root folder, but I'm sure many people already know this... ;)

"conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf" is the file that would contain the different variables for where the hosts would be pointed to... If the Webmin tool can edit this file or add virtual hosts differently I have not found where I am supposed to be looking. Remember I am a noob with TurnKey LAMP. :)

I would have say... whatever.com be the main host url. That would be pointed to www/mainsite. Then say... gallery.whatever.com to be a completely separate installation and pointing to folder www/gallery. This was no problem in WAMP and have done it many times. But I'm having troubles accomplishing this with TurnKey LAMP.

Any more suggestions or even a quick and brief "How-To" on enabling virtual hosts through the Webmin or if I have to manually edit the files, any directions would be fantastic! Thank you!!

No worries

Reply 4 2011-02-10

Sorry I can't be of more immediate help.

You will probably need to adjust file paths in the config file but otherwise I would imagine that they should be pretty much the same.

Editing the files from Windows is easy. What I do is use a combo of Filezilla and Notepad++. If you set Notepad++ as the default editor in Filezilla then it's a case of browsing to the desired file in Filezilla and right clicking and selecting 'View/Edit'. Don't use Windows Notepad to edit Linux files as it will corrupt them (Win uses different formatting). Off the top of my head the config files should be found in /etc/apache.

It'd be great if you can post back because as you said I'm sure there will be others you would find it useful. :)

Thanks again!

Reply 5 2011-02-10

I have not tried to use the same config file, but I can try and see what happens. I am not entirely sure how to get in and edit the files manually like I did on a Windows box... I am still new to the Linux world and learning as I go. :) I am guessing I can just SFTP and find the same files and do it that way, but I will poke around the ubuntu forums a bit and see what I can come up with.

I will see what I can find out in navigating the file structure within the server and see what I can do. I really appreciate all of your help. Thank you so much! I will post my findings to this forum once I make it work in case others are interested in setting up Virtual Hosts who are Linux/LAMP noobs like me. :)