Learning Red Hat Linux, Second Edition

Chapter 12. Setting Up Internet Services

In the preceding chapters, you learned how to connect your Linux system to a local area network (LAN) or to the Internet via an Internet service provider (ISP). By doing so, you were able to access a plethora of services provided by others, including file transfers via FTP, web pages, email, and Telnet. In this chapter you’ll learn how to set up several Linux Internet servers, including an FTP server, an Apache web server, an email (SMTP/POP) server, and a DNS server. You’ll also learn how to implement a basic firewall to help protect your systems from unauthorized access via the Internet. These applications let you and others access data on your Linux system via the Internet. These applications will be most useful if your system is connected to the Internet 24/7. But, even if your connection is intermittent, you and others can access the services these applications provide whenever the connection is active.

Running an FTP Server

An FTP server lets you transfer files from one system to another via a network. When two computers are connected to the Internet, you can use FTP to transfer files from one to the other even though the computers are not directly connected.

An FTP server attempts to authenticate users that ask to use it. You can configure your FTP server to accept requests only from users who have an account on the system running the FTP server, or you can configure it to accept requests from anyone, via a facility known as ...