The Perfect Server - Fedora 12 x86_64 [ISPConfig 2]

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
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Last edited 11/20/2009

This is a detailed description about how to set up a Fedora 12 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable) with PHP5/Ruby/Python, Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Fedora 12, but should apply to the 32-bit version with very little modifications as well. In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

I will use the following software:

• Web Server: Apache 2.2.13
• PHP 5.3.0
• Ruby
• Python
• Database Server: MySQL 5.1.39
• Mail Server: Postfix
• DNS Server: BIND9 (chrooted)
• FTP Server: proftpd
• POP3/IMAP server: Dovecot
• Webalizer for web site statistics

Please note that this setup does not work for ISPConfig 3! It is valid for ISPConfig 2 only!

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Requirements

To install such a system you will need the following:

• Download the Fedora 12 DVD iso image from a mirror near you (the list of mirrors can be found here: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/12/), e.g. http://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-12-x86_64-DVD.iso
• an Internet connection...

2 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the gateway 192.168.0.1. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

3 Install The Base System

Boot from your Fedora 12 DVD. Select Install or upgrade an existing system:

It can take a long time to test the installation media so we skip this test here:

The welcome screen of the Fedora installer appears. Click on Next:

Choose your language next:

Select your keyboard layout:

If you see the following message (Error processing drive: /dev/sda. This device may need to be reinitialized. REINITIALIZING WILL CAUSE ALL DATA TO BE LOST!), please click on Re-initialize drive:

Fill in the hostname of the server:

Choose your time zone:

Give root a password:

Next we do the partitioning. Select Replace existing Linux system. This will give you a small /boot partition and a large / partition which is fine for our purposes:

Select Write changes to disk:

The hard drive is being formatted: