Kloxo

Installing, Configuring, Troubleshooting server daemons such as Web and Mail
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hitsfmdj
Posts: 1
Joined: 2014/06/09 20:44:59

Kloxo

Post by hitsfmdj » 2014/06/09 21:07:55

Hello, I have been using Centos for some time now with all my VPS. I am not very good with linux but I can follow guides very well. I am always able to setup my web servers by installing the LAMP stack in centos from shell. And with the isntallation of webmin.

This on the most part has always worked fine for me.

Now I want to setup a personal server at home. So I got a server here running vmware centos vm. So its like a VPS but my own.......

Now I want to setup multiple sites. Preferably use multiple domain names that would point to multiple "shared" hosting accounts to run my own sites. Like www/phpbb/ points to myforum.net and www/wordpress/ points to mywordpresssite.com etc......

I want all this to run all on the same server. I am able to do this all by hand with my current config. But It is a very slow and tricky procces to setup apache to point to virtual home directories etc.. So I know it all can be done without any special software but I like to just click and create and the rest is all done.

So a hosting control panel came to my mind. But the only free one that seemed easy enough to install is Kloxo. So I installed it fine with the online guides. I can acesss my kloxo admin site just fine.

But I am stuck on pointing an IP to a domain. I am not to sure how I have to setup kloxo so that it can easy create new users and those configs all automaticly with apache and ftp etc.... I cant seem to find a guide on how to do this specificaly? Maybe I can't?

I found Ip address setting in kloxo but when I try and select one of my domain from the drop down menu to point to an IP I get an error from Kloxo that it can not ping that IP to my domain, Makes sense to me as the IP in the list is 192.168.0.254 ( the lan assigned ip to centos ) Usualy I just setup my own port forwards in my router and im good to go. But kloxo insists on trying to ping 192.168.0.254 from the outside world and not my real public ip from the router. If I program centos IP to the settings of my ISP it obviously wont have any www conectivity from behind my router. And I dont wan't to give centos direct connection as then id have to setup this centos web server to also act as my router so I can have net in the rest of my house and that gets a little too complicated :P

-So is there a way to get kloxo to understand im behind a local area network and not a real public IP? Cause when I enter http://mypublicip I get the default Kloxo html page that it is not setup to forward any ip to this domain.....

-Is it complicated or can it even be done,? I can have multiple hosting accounts all pointing to the same server ip (centos kloxo box) but all on their own domain names? pointing to the root of their own web directory

If Kloxo seems like its far from best for what I want to do could any one point to links and possibly online guides on how to setup? alternative free ? Linux noob here :)

Thank you sooo much for reading and your help. ( I tried to create a account at Kloxo forums but I'm stuck at the question: What is the name of LxCenter VPShosting controlpanel?: I wrote Kloxo lol and it wont let me in! :)

gerald_clark
Posts: 10642
Joined: 2005/08/05 15:19:54
Location: Northern Illinois, USA

Re: Kloxo

Post by gerald_clark » 2014/06/10 01:45:11

1. First you must own multiple domains.
2. You must own a block of public static IP addresses.
3. You need a lot of Linux experience.

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TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: Kloxo

Post by TrevorH » 2014/06/10 07:50:49

I wouldn't touch kloxo with a bargepole...
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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Super Jamie
Posts: 310
Joined: 2014/01/10 23:44:51

Re: Kloxo

Post by Super Jamie » 2014/06/10 10:59:00

I don't know anything about Kloxo, but I can explain to you in a simple way how websites work.

When you type "www.myforum.com" or similar, your computer queries a DNS server. This DNS server looks in a global database of domains, and returns a message to your computer like "www.myforum.com is actually at IP address 1.2.3.4" (just an example IP address).

Your web browser then connects to the computer at 1.2.3.4 and asks "Give me the webpage http://www.myforum.com" and the webserver running on 1.2.3.4 returns the contents of that webpage.

As you have seen, you can have multiple websites running on the one computer using vhosts in Apache. So whilst your computer is asking "give me http://www.myforum.com", someone else's computer could be asking 1.2.3.4 "give me http://www.mywordpresssite.com" and the webserver running on 1.2.3.4 will give you both different websites.

So, to setup a webserver using vhosts you must have a vhost name like "www.myforum.com", and a directory like "/var/www/myforum", you give these two items to Apache. You can setup many vhosts in the one Apache instance. You must also have an IP address and a DNS entry. To create DNS for "www.myforum.com" you must own myforum.com and be paying a domain registrar for it, and you need nameservers which other DNS servers can query.

For your own purposes inside your home network, I would not bother buying domains and setting up IP addresses, there is a simpler way.

In the file /etc/hosts you can trick your local computer into thinking an IP address is a hostname. Given your CentOS system is 192.168.0.254, your desktop system's hosts file might have something like:

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
192.168.0.254 www.myforum.com
192.168.0.254 www.mywordpresssite.com
Now if you type "www.myforum.com" into your browser, the hosts file returns the message "www.myforum.com is actually at IP address 192.168.0.254", and your computer then connects to your CentOS machine and asks "give me http://www.myforum.com".

This is not how you make a live website which the world can see, but it will suffice just for tinkering around at home.

Personally I don't really see how setting up an Apache vhost using the config files is difficult, it is literally 4 lines:

Code: Select all

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.hostname.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/hostname
</VirtualHost>
and the command service httpd restart.

I would suggest to just setup your hosts in /etc/hosts, setup your vhosts in httpd.conf, and don't use this Kloxo thing. It sounds like by trying to simplify all this with a web interface, you are actually making things harder for yourself.

I also assume you are doing this to improve your Linux knowledge, perhaps with the intention of using this knowledge to further your career. I'm sure most people here would advise you to learn to use proper configuration files and not to rely on web interfaces or control panels. Say you do get such a Linux job, one day you may be asked to configure a system with no Webmin or Kloxo and no chance of installing them. If you only know how to click things on a webpage, you can't do your task. If you know the configuration files, you could probably do it regardless of whether it's CentOS or Debian or any other Linux distro.

Anyway, I hope that's of some use to you.

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