Some people are confused (or just have the wrong idea) about what a computer server actually is.

The technical definition is that a server is a computer dedicated to providing a specific service or services.

Concerning what you would use in the home, the most common example is a file server, i.e. a computer where its sole purpose in life is to store files you can upload or download at any time on your home network. Continued

The internet as we know it today predominantly runs on Linux. There’s an extremely high probability that the internet connection you’re using right now is connected thru a Linux server – and routed thru many other Linux servers along the way.

Below is a graph showing the market share for top servers across all domains from August 1995 to September 2008 – from news.netcraft.com.

You’ll notice that Apache has a huge lead over anything else out there. The only other type that comes anywhere near it is Microsoft.

While it’s true the HTTP server from Apache has a Windows version, the one used the most without any hint of doubt is the *nix release.

Why was it that Linux (and Unix) paved the way for the modern internet and not something else?

Two reasons:

1. Cost.
2. The ability of Linux to "act enterprise" without needing enterprise-grade computer hardware.

Imagine the following scenario:

It’s 1994. You get the idea that you want to run your own dial-up ISP. You need the "leased pipe" (the primary internet connection from the phone carrier, usually T1), a computer to act as the server and a bunch of serial-connected dial-up modems (via digiboard most likely) to receive the calls for that server to give your customers connectivity. And of course a bunch of phone lines from the local carrier for your modems.

The computer you use is obviously not going to be some $10,000+ super-duper server because you simply don’t have the cash for it. Rather, it’s going to be whatever you can afford that will get the job done.

And all you’ve got is a 486 DX2 66MHz box – which at the time was modern.

It’s 1994 and you need a server-grade OS. What’s available?

Windows NT 3.1 did exist but wasn’t exactly equipped to do what you wanted. And there was no way MS-DOS with Windows 3.1 could do the job.

Apple’s MacOS was only at System 7.1 in 1994, so that was a no-go.

What’s left? Unix and Linux.

Any Unix was too proprietary at the time – assuming you could even get your hands on a copy of the OS.

For you nit-pickers out there, yes it’s true there were BSD distros in ‘94 – but it wasn’t exactly easy to get a hold of. For those interested, read up on 386BSD, the predecessor to Free/Open/NetBSD.

Then there’s Linux. You had a few choices at the time. Slackware, Red Hat, Debian (of course) and maybe a few others.

At this point you acquired the Linux OS of your choice from a friend on floppy diskettes, installed it, configured the server and gave it the best shot you could. Your Linux "server" had absolutely no GUI because it had to be 100% optimized for speed (and for the fact it was never meant to be a server).

God willing, if your "server" didn’t choke on a daily basis and your customers stayed customers, you made enough of a profit to cover the T1 line cost and upgrade to a real server later on.

~ ~ ~

This story is more or less how modern internet started. There were thousands of Mom n’ Pop ISPs that operated out of a garage (sometimes literally) just like this – and the vast majority of them were all running Linux. Windows couldn’t do it back then and neither could MacOS.

Linux was literally the only OS out there that had the right price (free), ran similar to a Unix and could use existing computers of the time to connect customers. Anything else would break the bank way too easily. What would you have used that you could afford? Netware? Lotus Domino? HP-UX (that requires those refrigerator-sized HP servers)? I don’t think so.

In addition, those who ran web sites also followed suit. They used plain-jane consumer grade PCs "upgraded" to servers (by OS and nothing more usually) to run things like HTTP servers, IRC, FTP, electronic mail and so on.

Would the internet as we know it exist without Linux?

Absolutely not. Where Linux shines the most is in its server applications – no question.

This is written for the benefit of those who use the Hotmail webmail service. If your e-mail address ends in @msn.com, @live.com or @hotmail.com or you use Windows Live Domains, this applies to you.

POP-based Hotmail is not available in the free version at the time of this writing and I’ll say that right up front. You need to flip over $19.95 a year to get that feature currently. Yes, this turns off a lot of people (considering Gmail offers the same ability for free) but if you want the POP you gotta do it.

So let’s say you go ahead and do that. What are the server names you need to use to get to the goods?

This is what they are:

POP3 incoming server: pop3.live.com
Secure required: Yes
Port: 995

SMTP outgoing server: smtp.live.com
Secure required: No
Port: 25

How to login: Use your Windows Live ID (i.e. your e-mail address) and your existing mail password.

Will POP access ever be available in the free version?

Microsoft has said they "have plans" to do so. So watch for it. For now, you have to pay for POP if you use Hotmail.

For development and testing reasons, I wanted to set up a local server on my Mac Pro so that I could operate a local copy of PCMech.com. I thought I would document how I went about it for the benefit of others down the road.

The easiest method to set up a quick LAMP server under OS X is to use MAMP. MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Now, both Apache and PHP do come bundled with OS X, but you’re going to get into command line hell if you want to set it up. MAMP is much easier because you just download, drag to the Applications folder, and you’re done.

Once you’ve done this, let’s do the following:

1. Navigate to the new MAMP folder and start the MAMP app.
2. Change any preferences you might want to change, but otherwise go ahead and click “Start Servers”.
3. Click on “Open Start Page” and your default web browser will load up the default homepage at localhost. You will see a menu of options, too, because MAMP has PHPMyAdmin and other utilities built right in.

Being that MAMP is completely independent, it does not run in the background. So, you’ll need to start up MAMP like any other application in order for your server to be operational. To remove MAMP, just drag the MAMP folder to Trash. No config files for OS X are altered, so a simply drag to Trash means everything is gone.

To work with any files, you will need to place your website files into the “htdocs” sub-folder off of the MAMP folder. Yes, this means your website files reside in the Applications folder which is  odd. But, this is how MAMP maintains its independent nature.

Lastly, you might want to get command line access to MySQL so that you can run MySQL commands via Terminal. For instance, I needed to import the PCMech database into my local database and it was way too large to be imported via PHPMyAdmin. The tedious way would be to manually split up your SQL file. The much easier way is to set up the MAMP version of MySQL to be able to take commands via Terminal. To do so, execute the following commands in Terminal:

sudo mkdir /var/mysql
sudo ln -s /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock
sudo chown _mysql /var/mysql/mysql.sock
sudo chmod 777 /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Once that is done, you can import an SQL file via the following command via Terminal:

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql -hlocalhost -uroot -proot [DBNAME] < ‘/Users/[USER]/Documents/Database Backups/[NAME OF SQL FILE].sql’

Replace [DBNAME] with the name of your local database, [USER] with your username under OS X, and [NME OF SQL FILE] with whatever the file name is for your SQL backup from which you want to restore. You’ll want to make sure the file path for your SQL file is correct, too. I use a folder called “Database Backups”, but that’s me.

With this, you should be good to go. I now have a copy of PCMech.com running locally on my Mac.

Foxmarks is a freely available add-on for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Normally what you would do to send/retrieve your bookmarks is use the Foxmarks servers to store this information, however if you host your own web site (or just use free FTP space provided by your ISP) you can store your own bookmarks privately via FTP. See video below for details.

All-In-One motherboards tend to be something either you love or hate (personally, I love them). One thing I have found to be the case though, is they make for a great foundation on home servers.

For example, I have a home server running on a Biostar all-in-one motherboard with a Celeron 1.3 Ghz processor and 512 MB RAM. The machine has a RAID 3 card installed for redundant storage and runs Windows 2000 like a rock. This server houses all of our music and movies through a couple of shares.

One great benefit to using an older motherboard is the power requirements are typically a lot less than newer machines, which means the machine will not produce as much heat. On our server, I have it configured to automatically start up in the morning as well as automatically shut down at night so it doesn’t consume power while we are sleeping at night.

Anyhow, the point being if you are looking to build your own home server, give a good look at all-in-ones as they are typically abundant and cheap. On top of that, going with a second or third generation motherboard (look on eBay), could really make the cost appealing.