Switching on the LAMP

9 May 2003

I’m feeling rather pleased with myself, as I’ve managed to go from an empty old AMD K62 box to a full Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP install in one evening. With a little help from some friends, natch :)

I even got Samba and MySQL Control Center up and running, so that I can do all my development seamlessly from a Windows box.

I’ve installed a few different Linux distros over the years (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake ..), but tonight is the only time I’ve been able to make any real progress without hitting a brick wall. I heart Debian.

- Drew McLellan

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§ Nathan Pitman: smarty pants. :)
§ Tyler Bird: I’m totally jealous. I printed the article off Macromedia.com by David Sklar. And I’m hoping to turn on my own LAMP soon. ;)

I got here by your article on Macromedia.com, ’Tableless layouts with Dreamweaver MX’.

Good article and I’m now considering getting your book off Amazon.com. Just have a dozen others that I’ve already bought and have yet to read... :(
§ Drew:
A tip I’d offer is to know exactly what hardware you’ve got before you start the install.

Open up the case and take each card out (particularly network and graphics) and write down the name, model number and anything else listed. If there’s not a clear identifier, write down any numbers written on the PCB or on stickers. Chances are that someone else has needed to identify the same thing in the past and the answer will be in Google Groups.

If you get stuck at any point of the installation, just google for the question you’re being asked and someone will have the answer 9 times out of 10.
§ Tyler Bird: The OS that I’m using right now is Red Hat 9. And it detected everything. The Anaconda installer is a real beast. It’s smart and easy to use.

My hurdle right now is the lack of linux knowledge, period. And the ease of Red Hat 9 might make it seem like it would be easy to do the rest.

Yet, I’m up to the challenge and I learn quickly. Especially when it something that I really love to do - like the web.
§ Mike:

With a little help from some friends, natch :)

You live with a Guru!
§ Drew: Well, yes. Plus I had some handy tips from my good friends at Notnet.
§ Jesse: I have two LAMP boxes at my feet (RH 7.3 and RH 8.0) and I get to work with OS X that also could have Unix/Apache/MySQL/Perl - although Perl is a little odd.

I would love to use Debian.. might replace the RH 7.3 with Debian soon. Just the last time I tried out Debian that box got a new dent ;)

For windows users though I can see why it may be a bit difficult to configure RH. Just trust in the documentation and learn a little VI.

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About Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan has been hacking on the web since around 1996 following an unfortunate incident with a margarine tub. Since then he’s spread himself between both front- and back-end development projects, and now is Director and Senior Web Developer at edgeofmyseat.com in Maidenhead, UK (GEO: 51.5217, -0.7177). Prior to this, Drew was a Web Developer for Yahoo!, and before that primarily worked as a technical lead within design and branding agencies for clients such as Nissan, Goodyear Dunlop, Siemens/Bosch, Cadburys, ICI Dulux and Virgin.net. Somewhere along the way, Drew managed to get himself embroiled with Dreamweaver and was made an early Macromedia Evangelist for that product. This lead to book deals, public appearances, fame, glory, and his eventual downfall.

Picking himself up again, Drew is now a strong advocate for best practises, and stood as Group Lead for The Web Standards Project 2006-08. He has had articles published by A List Apart, Adobe, and O’Reilly Media’s XML.com, mostly due to mistaken identity. Drew is a proponent of the lower-case semantic web, and is currently expending energies in the direction of the microformats movement, with particular interests in making parsers an off-the-shelf commodity and developing simple UI conventions. He writes here at all in the head and, with a little help from his friends, at 24 ways.

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