Progress Update

 

Got LAMP set up along with Webmin and a CMS (e107).

Though I've set these things up before on a different Linux distro, it was still a change since Debian can sometimes work with scripts and packages a little differently than distro's like Ubuntu (e.g. .deb's instead of .tar.gz's), so I learned a good bit more about working around with Debian.

I've been taking time to learn and work a lot more with BASH and Shell scripting. This wasn't for usage in any scenario with my server, but rather another situation with a different one that I help out with. I've learned that in many situations (usually where you require some sort of automation) BASH scripting can be incredibly useful, but also very different compared to how most object-oriented scripting and programming languages can work, so there's a lot more learning and tweaking involved.

In my time playing with BASH scripting, I learned an interesting thing about the way UNIX and Windows handle files with text in them differently, as I was having a weird problem with a script I was working on, and eventually found out that since the file was written on a Windows system, there were auto-added (and deeply hidden) symbols and characters in my scripts. I was able to remove these hidden items and change the formatting using something in Linux called vim.

As I mentioned in a previous post, even though there's not too much to do, there's a massive amount to learn from doing these (sometimes) small things. Just from what I've done so far I've learned a very large amount about servers and networks in general.

My next steps are to start doing more tweaking to my CMS and getting it fully set up, while I try to set up an FTP server (and see if I can actually get Samba to work for once).