Re: [cobalt-users] Newbie Questions -- help!

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:01 PM 3/13/00 -0500, you wrote:

> I'm thinking of buying a Cobalt Qube2, or maybe possibly-but-probably-not 
> a Raq3.  I want to set up a webserver at home, I have various reasons for 
> doing this...but anyway, I wasn't able to find answers flat out enough to 
> meet my needs so I'm turning to you guys.  Some of these questions may 
> seem rather ignorant, I apologize for that, I'm new to the webserver 
> world.  And many of the features on the Cobalt web site aren't thoroughly 
> explained, and I don't understand implications since I'm still learning 
> this stuff.
>
> 1)  DNS names, I talked to a techie at networksolutions, and they said 
> that I must have a primary and secondary DNS entry.  Which would mean I 
> have to have two seperate servers...is this true?  It sounds pretty 
> obscure to me.

You actually reached alive person at Network Solutions?  Please tell us the 
magic incantation you used.  Some of us wait hours.  Some of us wait 
days.  Some of us wait weeks <smile>.

Yes, DNS requires two nameservers.  You CAN put them both on one machine; 
to do so you'll need two STATIC IP#s (ones that don't change).  And it's a 
very non-robust solution; if your connection is ever down or your system 
turned off all mail to you will be returned to sender, and all website 
requests will get a "no such domain found" error message.

> 2)  If I have a DSL line, which is dedicated of course, but my ISP 
> provides a DYNAMIC IP address...will DHCP automatically change the server 
> IP to match it?  And if so, wouldn't my DNS entry in networksolutions (for 
> the primary and secondary IPs) be different than my actual IP?  Or would 
> that change automatically?

You cannot run DNS on a dynamic IP address.  Period.  You can run a website 
on a dynamic IP address, but it will be down quite a bit.  And you'll have 
to make changes to DNS quite often.  Sometimes several times an hour.  Not 
a good idea.  If you insist on running a website on DSL you should pay 
extra for static IP.  Since DSL does slow down and even stop reasonably 
often, you probably shouldn't run a primary nameserver on it.

> 3)  How many domain names can I host on a Qube2?  I want to be able to 
> have, lets say, 5 domains.  me.com, you.com, they.com, us.com, and i.com 
> (just made them up).  Can I have seperate web pages for each domain, as 
> well as seperate FTP access to each one and pop3 e-mail boxes for each domain?

Someone else will have to answer the Qube-specific stuff; I just don't know.

Jeff

--
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>