More Ubuntu Goodness.
Over at Howto Forge Chris L Fay has wriiten a liller post on LAMP Installation On Ubuntu 6.06 For Linux Noobs. 
Not exactly up there with say “War and Peace” as a title but bear with me it gets better.
Oh! The LAMP doesn’t refer to the light bulb thing that goes off in cartoons when the Coyote has another “brilliant” idea. It stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (or Perl). These are the componnets that a good (as opposed to say a M$ webserver) needs to do it’s work. (This site like about 70% of the webservers in the world use this stuff).
Linux is the operating system, this time it’s Ubuntu flavour. (it’s free)
Apache is the webserver (it’s free)
MySQL is the database (it’s free)
PHP is the programming language and so is Perl (it’s free but you had guessed that hadn’t you?)
Here is some of the hype…
I, like many others, made the decision to attempt an install of Ubuntu 6.06 server with the preconfigured LAMP option without having ever attempted using Linux before. My goal was to build a setup that I could host my personal web site from. Embarking on this journey I had no idea how much knowledge I lacked and in turn would learn in my quest to host. I floundered around on forums and clung helplessly to Google for aid in all the places I fell short. I found that a really good resource for building a LAMP configuration for complete Linux noobs was either not available, or stuffed neatly in some Google Bermutan triangle which my browser was afraid to go.
Hence, I am writing this as a partial documentation of my trials and tribulations with hopes of aiding all Linux noobs on the steps necessary to create a basic Linux, Apache2, MySQL5 and PHP5 system with FTP. Again, this document is tailored to complete Linux beginners and is in no way a complete guide to attacking such a setup. It will get you up and running but will need security hardening like no other.
Now the odds are infinitesimally tiny that this is something that you are likely to want to do but I have to tell you reading the post that it all sounds so …. so plausible (yes that’s the word I was looking for) that by the time you are halfway down the page you are looking around the room for a spare PC to have a bash.
So now for the grubby bit. WHY?
Why would you want to do this?
Well obviously because YOU CAN.
Next because webservers are great things to have lying around the house, they can be big filing cabinets for your music and documents that you have scanned.
They can be educational… this web thing isn’t going to go away you know.
They find all sorts of silly uses that you didn’t even know you needed until you have one.
But mainly because you can and you don’t need a better reason.
Have a read, get a spare box and have a go.