New Domain Name: Anybody Know How I Use It?

[Charlie]

Hello all.

Some may have noted my mumping on the rants thread about DynDNS whipping my URL off me, so now my server is off the 'net. (my apologies again for pulling my regular disappearing act)

Well, as crazydomains.co.uk had a sale on and dynu.com have a free dynamic DNS service which includes people with their own domains I decided to bit the bullet:

qubeserver.com is my new domain and I registered that top level account with dynu.com and followed the instructions to the letter. Well actually they only seem to have instructions for their own third level domains but how hard can it be..?
It's a shame my router doesn't support this dynamic DNS supplier but dynu.com have software for the job which seemed easy enough to set up...

...but no joy.

All I get is 'The requested URL could not be retrieved'. I know my set up is fine as all was well before DynDNS.org pulled the rug out from under me and I can reach my server from outside using it's current IP address...
...I've had a good google and the best I could come up with was to add my 'host's' name server addresses / IP's to the defaults provided by my domain supplier. That didn't help, not mentioned by any of dynu's docs anyway.

I've asked dynu for help but I haven't received a reply and on a free account I don't expect one any time soon.

So there you go. I have all the ingredients to get my server on line again, and with a more sensible URL to boot, but I'll be blowed if I can get this particular souffle to rise.

Can anyone with some experience point me in the direction of a dummies guide, or hold me by the hand themselves?

Thank you!

 

[Merlin]

Hi Charlie,

If you are sure that the server DNS addresses that you put into Dynu's page to be associated with your domain are correct, then it may need 24 hours or more for the DNS resolution to filter through their servers as well as other servers, then it should be resolvable on the Internet.

For example: dns123.dynu.com might be the format they could use to point to their DNS server, with dns124.dynu.com as a secondary address.

Their help page is here:-

http://www.dynu.com/Default.aspx?page=faq&topic=Dynamic%20DNS%20Service#65

I don't know if it reads like stereo instructions yet.

 

[Charlie]

Thanks Merlin

Here's some happy news:

The Qube RiscOS Server is now back on line.

Hurrah! ​

Would anyone be interested in a blow by blow account of my server's set up? Possibly useful for anyone who wants to do their own.

 

[Merlin]

I would, Charlie, but change a few details to protect the innocent, if you follow me...

 

[AmiNeo]

... not to mention the security implications of not doing so.

 

[Charlie]

Mini How-To:

Set Up a Personal (Web)Server

Why?
Because you can.
Because you have a spare computer, and have a broadband connection.
Because you already have a home media PC that does bog-all most of the time.
Because you want to publish your own website, and you're a bit of a control freak.
Because there's a lot more you can do with your own server than being hosted elsewhere.
Because it's far cheaper than a proper server plugged in to a commercial host.
Because it's very convenient to have the whole gubbins under your own roof.
Because 'I have my own ultra-cool webserver and you haven't.'
Because...

What Do I Need?
A broadband connection (static or dynamic connection).
A proper router (nothing fancy but not one of those plug in to the PC, USB, jobbies).
A PC connected to said router via Ethernet, an operating system, some software.
A domain name would be nice (so peeps can surf to 'yoursite.thing').
A DNS provider (so your connection's 'www.xxx.yyy.zzz' number gets translated to 'yoursite.thing').
A website to actually publish to the internet.

A broadband connection
Ok, hands up everyone who doesn't have a broadband connection? Thought so, moving on.
Static vs Dynamic DNS:
In a nut-shell all(ish) networked computers have an IP number, something along the lines of 192.168.0.1, this example being fairly typical 'IP' a home router which most of us use as a gateway between our home networks and the World Wide Web. Now, if every networked machine in the world needed an individual 'IP' we'd have long since run out of numbers. So you have boxes (like home routers) that section bits off - each mini-network can use IP addresses as it likes, the router assigns said IPs to it's computers on the inside and gets assigned an IP to it on the outside by the 'big routers' of the WWW. Each router then handles the connection between the two.
With me so far?
Even with this scheme the WWW is running short of IP addresses for the 'big routers' so most internet service providers (ISPs or big routers) give home users dynamic IPs rather than static ones; your router's outside IP changes pretty well every time it connects to the internet rather than remaining the same. This allows IPs to be recycled when not in use.
If you have a static IP most of this is of no interest to you, but dynamic connections are more likely. That's no problem if you're surfing but if your 'phone number' keeps changing people will have a hard time calling you. Your server will never be where you left it. This is where your ISP (the server that maintains the phone numbers) and your Domain provider (the server that keeps your domain name) come in useful, along with your dynamic DNS provider. Who wants to surf to a number when a name is much nicer anyway?
So:
Your router gets assigned a random(ish) IP by your internet service provider (ISP). That's no good because it's just a number and it keeps changing.
But:
Your dynamic DNS provider watches out for changes in your IP and by 'magic' internally handles the translation to a static IP that it can use in conjunction with your domain provider.
And:
When someone surfs to your site with 'yoursite.thing' that goes to your domain server... which gets translated in to the static IP of your dynamic DNS server ....which does some 'magic' to convert it's static IP in to whatever dynamic IP your router currently has... then the connection gets handed to your router. Connection made!
Then:
Nothing! Because you haven't told your router what to do with the connection... That's next.

 

[Charlie]

A Proper Router
You've got got your connection as far as your router but at best that's as far as it will get. Maybe you'll get your router's login request from outside (if it's a bit cr*p).
What you need is for your router to pass connections from outside to whatever machine on your network is going to be your server. Pretty well every make does this differently, you'll need to know the IP for the server on YOUR home network. For instance if the router's internal IP is 192.168.0.1 you might want your server to be 192.168.0.2...
...yep, the first thing you MUST do is work out how to make sure your server has a STATIC IP on your own network. In general the simplest way to do this is to leave your server's settings alone and set the router up to always assign it the same IP every time by dynamic DNS. There will probably be an address reservation table under it's LAN settings.
Having ensured your server is always in the same place you need to set your router to:
1) Unblock it's firewall for incoming connections that will go to the server. These connections are referred to as 'ports', for instance you'll likely want port 80 unblocked for HTTP connections.
2) That unblocked port then needs 'forwarding' to the IP of your server only, so the router knows where to send such incoming connections and also so the security of other computers on your network isn't compromised. An open port can be seen from outside so you want to be sure any external access can only go where you want in case of 'attack'.
In my case this is all done by setting up a service that states what port should be opened for what kind of traffic, then adding that service as an incoming firewall rule pointing at a specific internal IP. The port forwarding comes 'for free' via the firewall's security settings. Be careful here, if you just open up the port without stating what the port is going to your whole network is potentially open.

Thus far people can now connect as far as your server from outside, and only your server.
Of course said server isn't doing anything useful and may even be a security risk to your network until it's been properly set up. Next post

 

[Charlie]

A Server
So what is a server? No more than a computer that runs software intended to 'serve' some kind of content at request. The obvious one being web pages, but there's much more you can do.
The hardware doesn't have to be amazing, my Qube server originally ran with a MIPS CPU running at a heady 250mhz and 256mb RAM before I 'upgraded' it with a Mini-ITX motherboard running a 1ghz VIA CPU and 512mb RAM. I/O performance is more important. Large 'n fast hard drives are where you should spend your money but having said that my sever's been fine with some boggo IDE drives I happened to have kicking around. Recently the Qube has been upgraded once more with the addition of a HP N54L microserver and some properly big, fast HDDs as it was cheap and has a whole lot of grunt for future plans...
On the software front there are a few options, I'll I get round to specifics in a later post. For now the minimum you'll need is an OS, web serving software, and database software. Although my beloved RiscOS will manage this IMO the practicable options are *NIX (urgh!) with Apache and a SQL package or any old Windows (honest, you don't need a server version) and a prepackaged web server distro to take some of the pain out of setting things up. I make no apologies for my hatred of all forms of UNIX, especially those called Linux. When I get on to specifics it will be 'doze all the way, but the principles are transferable and I will be using the 'doze versions of the usual *NIX apps anyway.