Tools

My technology

Hardware:

(my personal hardware - not the web server)

• Athlon 1GHz, 768mb ram, 40GB HD, Gentoo Linux desktop (currently 1.2+ version)
• Scratch-built, Duron 850Mhz, 512MB RAM, OS: Mandrake 8.1 Linux (development webserver/mail server)
• Gateway GP7-450, Pentium III 450 Mhz, 384 MB RAM, OS: Windows '98
• Internet Connection: BTOpenworld ADSL Internet Connection (512/256) USB, connected via ADSL/Ethernet router

Software:

Image-Editing: The Gimp.
Viewers: KuikShow & Irfanview
HTML-Editing: Quanta
Webbrowser: Opera v7/Firebird
Networking: Samba

Bigsites

Hardware

700mhz Pentium III, 512mb RAM

software

Server-side scripting: PHP (php-accelerator)
SQL database: MySQL database
PHP Development: PEAR
Web servers: Apache, thttpd (mod_gzip)
Mail servers: Sendmail, POP3/IMAP server

DNS Server: DJB DNS server

I use djbDNS for DNS serving and resolution because it's far, far easier to use (especially when automated) and to setup simple systems. At home the data setup is really just a matter of a few lines - shown below.

.linux::ns.linux
.bigsites::ns.linux
.minotaur::ns.linux

=images.bigsites:192.168.1.2
=tower:192.168.1.128

+minotaur:192.168.1.30:
+*.bigsites:192.168.1.30:
+*.minotaur:192.168.1.30:

• Setup to answer as name servers for the few domains I run on my test server.
• Set a couple of static names to IPs
• finally set minotaur as an IP, and wildcards for a couple of the domains

That's the basics of my DNS data file! For bigger setups, it's also pretty trivial to generate automatically from a fairly simple database.

I did add a wrinkle by using dnscache (the resolver) to be able to resolve from my desktop to a number of alternative top-level-domains, such as .geek - it's not a hard change though - it's documented at The Open Root Server Confederation.