Setting up a Home Server

[Xtreme2damax]

I mostly know how to install Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyAdmin. My question pertains to the securing, hardening, configuration and tweaking of the server which admittedly Cpanel WHM makes a bit easier than digging into endless amounts configuration files, manually upgrading everything without EasyApache, more chance of something breaking. I was wondering is there is a free Cpanel alternative or something that offers a bit of automation like Cpanel WHM does. I don't have a static ip, but I do have a dynamic dns client that can update my ip whenever it changes.

 

[J03]

I mostly know how to install Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyAdmin. My question pertains to the securing, hardening, configuration and tweaking of the server which admittedly Cpanel WHM makes a bit easier than digging into endless amounts configuration files, manually upgrading everything without EasyApache, more chance of something breaking. I was wondering is there is a free Cpanel alternative or something that offers a bit of automation like Cpanel WHM does. I don't have a static ip, but I do have a dynamic dns client that can update my ip whenever it changes.

Webmin is OK, as far as GUI's go.

Webmin for the general server config. You can also get Virtualmin for configuring users with Apache/Postfix/mySQL/Bind... a bit like cPanel, but it's not quite as good.

As long as you set up iptables (whitelist ports you WANT to be accessible rather than blacklisting those that you DONT), use something like deny_hosts to prevent SSH brute-forcing and keep your software up to date (and dont run any daemons as root...), then you shouldn't do too badly, if you are the only user.

You don't want to be hosting a DNS Server from a machine with a dynamic IP. You probably wont need to if you're not hosting multiple sites. Just have the dyndns daemon running on the machine.

I personally use Debian Squeeze x86. If your machine has a fairly limited amount of memory, it's probably best sticking to 32bit distro's. I think that a barebones version of Debian uses less memory than CentOS, and definitely uses less memory than Ubuntu.