need a distro for a webserver

Hello penguins...

As the title says I'm looking to setup a home webserver and need a new distro. I'm very ( very) unhappy with ubuntu and its constant problems with mysql and wordpress, and I believe that most of these issues are traced back to folder/file ownership and permissions. I've had it with chmod and chowning every folder in /var/www just to get vsftpd to cooperate, and wordpress still refuses to work, so bring on the nuke it from orbit option (unless someone knows what the problem is here? "The uploaded file could not be moved to /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/" returns a bunch of unresolved google problems).

I'm looking for something like ubuntu, that comes with nice out-of-box features like vncviewer and such, but has root authority by default. I would already be using the same customised distro I have on my lappy, except that the computer I'm reviving is so old it only has a cd-rom drive, and no boot from usb support. I looked at debian but holy crap 50 cds, and the minimal installation would have to be manually packaged and hardened, or does the minimal installer help you with all that? I really don't have time to be doing it all manually

 

Are you using ubuntu desktop or server?

 

Tried both, both have the issues. Server was a bit kinder to me with ftp config, but the wordpress issue is killing me. The funny thing is I don't even use WP, I just wanted a testbed...

I'm not sure how I missed the debian live distro, I guess distrowatch failed me , but I'm playing around with it right now in a VM and it seems pretty good - I'm unsure what exactly is the difference/missing between the live iso and the tiny netinstaller debian.org provides, I'm guessing it's a few nice packages so that the image is usable live?

 

No offense, but it seems like you're having some issues configuring it, rather than ubuntu itself having issues. Make sure you've tried Ubuntu 10.04(Long Term Support).

As for other distributions of linux:
* CentOS - CentOS 6 is in a bit of flux and CentOS 5 is quite old, but it's still great, with the added benefit of upgrading to Red Hat with support).
* Debian - Also a bit old, and very similar to Ubuntu.
* Arch Linux - bleeding edge, but would work well

 

Ubuntu server is VERY stable and a great webserver platform. Debain squeeze is equally as good. As for ubuntu desktop I wouldnt recomend it with the new UI.

 

Went with squeeze and it works well, though I'm still having an issue with being unable to upload themes to wordpress... time for more googling

 

Yeah squeeze is what I use for webserving. Scientific Linux is worth a shot too. I'm too comfortable with debian to move anything crucial of mine to it but it's looking like a replacement for centos which is pretty much the standard web server distro.

 

Debian unless you have a specific need for a RH-based distro, in which case CentOS.

Debian is stable. Debian takes security, stability, and reliability very seriously.

Ubuntu is fine for a desktop OS, but I would never recommend anyone run it as a server OS. It's simply not designed with that sort of stability in mind.

(Note: I don't mean "stable" in the "doesn't crash" sense. Both are fine in that regard.)

 

Are you familiar with the "sticky bit" for file / dir permissions? It sounds like what you need here. I don't think this is a distro problem so much as a lack of familiarity with linux / unix utilities etc problem.

 

It's right there in the op that I tried chmod (777 -R) and chown ((users) (dir) -R)

Whatever it was it's not giving me troubles on deb squeeze, and since the ubuntu partition was written over by debian it's highly unlikely I'll ever know what the real problem(s) were, I'm just happy to have a web/mail/dns/ftp server that works. Was also pleasantly surprised to find that even the little netinstaller deb ships with included xtightvnc so I can work remotely, didn't even need to apt it.

 

I mean something like chmod 2775 or chmod 4775 which makes files created in a subdir belong to the dir owner not the creator, etc.

 

If it was a permissions problem I'd say it was more likely directory search ("executable" permission on directories) missing than anything else.

 

Centos is back up and running I think. Last I heard they were rolling out updates again. Maybe even a version 6 soon...but then again my teacher may have been full of hot air since he is a centos nut.

I beg to differ. I have 2 ubuntu servers running right now that have been up and working for a while. One is at 6+ months and the other started out as a 9.04 server and is now at 10.10. both have been as stable as can be. But Im off ubuntu once I updated my desktop to 11.04 so whenever I feel like I need to update or upgrade debain goes on.

 

I guess when I was talking about stability I was talking about things like, well, this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/790538

See it's that sort of thing -- a normal update spontaneously rendering something basic like cron non-functional -- that keeps me from recommending Ubuntu as a server distro.

Edit: And Canonical's response was also pretty poor. How a distro deals with its mistakes can be every bit as important as how it works to avoid them in the first place.

 

It took them one whole day to find and fix. I can't really complain. Had worse regressions with RHEL before.

 

Yes, but the bug happens to have broken the automated upgrade bit, hence the fix can only be applied by manually installing the update (or kicking cron). Not the end of the world, but still pretty poor.

I've never seen an RHEL regression that flat out broke any of the server-oriented software (though I have seen one that introduced some rather odd quirks to a Tomcat install). But then again, I don't deal with that many RHEL boxen, so I probably just lucked out.

 

They are going to release 6...but it's nothing I personally want anything to do with, and it's not because of SL either