I have really leaned a= nother one of this life's lessons today.
As any memb= er of this list will may or may not know I have been an active member of th= is list for 20+ years.
During this time I have lea= rned so much about the use of WebDNA from people such as Ken Grome, Donovan= Brooke, and others that have since moved on.
I ha= ve always tried hard to return the favour and as such at times have gone fa= r and beyond the task of offering help. I have enjoyed giving back to the c= ommunity from which my skills have grown. This I believe is the reason why = I have been contracted by WebDNA users from around the world.
I have seen many users over the years with configuration proble= ms, in particular the last few weeks with Ubuntu 18.04, hence the reason wh= y I wrote the instructions a week or so ago on how to set up WebDNA on a fr= esh installation of Ubuntu 18.04 - I even went as far as to provide an imag= e of the same available to anyone that would like it, all in the hope that = WebDNA would become a quick easy solution for members of this list to imple= ment.
I had a number of people request a copy of t= his image, none of whom have taken up the offer. One user requested that I = build an image that anyone could use on any platform. However this is not p= ossible for cloud servers as each cloud provider has their own flavour of U= buntu tuned to their hosting configuration. The instructions that I publish= will work if you follow the steps on any host and/or new Ubuntu 18.0 insta= llation.
And then along came Brian Harrington.=C2= =A0
I must preface this with the fact that everyth= ing that i have done for Brian was at no charge, purely a gesture of good w= ill that I extend to all members of this list.
Bri= an was unable to log into the Ubuntu 18.04 Droplet that he created. I offer= ed to meet him on Skype to help him get past his hurdle - less than a minut= e later I had connected to the Droplet (a virtual server) using ssh, Brian = had some confusion as to how that was achieved, and had not received the im= age that I had shared with him from DigitalOcean. So to make things easier = and so that he didn=E2=80=99t have to go backwards I simply completed the i= nstallation from the instructions=C2=A0that I had published.
=
Less than 20 minutes later Brian was the owner of a shiny new Ub= untu 18.04 server complete with a working installation of WebDNA server tha= t was only requiring a license number.
As you will= know, if you have read the published instructions, Webmin is also installe= d on the Droplet.
What happened next is purely com= ical, if I published the emails that I received and you read the warnings t= hat I provided, plus the repeated advice that I gave, =C2=A0you would see e= xactly where Brian=E2=80=99s problems are.
From he= re all Brian needed to do was upload his websites to /var/www/html and set = up his Virtual hosts - at this stage WebDNA was 100% functional with all th= e standard file extensions that are installed with the WebDNA installer.
As an additional task I set up two Virtual Hosts, on= e on 80 the other on 443 with the ssl certificate that he supplied so that = he could have a working reference.
However Brian h= ad other plans, he wanted to create a new directory /Library/Websites to be= the root directory of his webserver, remember this is the same person that= has had no experience with a Linux server, he has had experience with a Ma= c server so I believed that he had a good sense of being able to manage a L= inux Server. Brian didn=E2=80=99t want to use the installed Webmin, he want= ed to do all Apache configuration by uploading files with FTP however he di= dn=E2=80=99t have a FTP client.
Brian, you may rem= ember the Skype message that I sent you expressing my concern that if you w= ork outside the standard installation you would break it.
For the rest of the week I continued to help him, answer his questi= ons, provide advice. All the time doing my own work that Brian=E2=80=99s em= ails were interrupting. As I live in Sydney there were times that I was not= able to answer him immediately due to the 10 hour time difference.
Then on Friday afternoon (Sydney time) I received yet ano= ther email from Brian - he had locked himself out of his server, yes, I fix= ed this for him too, repaired his non-root user with sudo privileges and ad= vised him that in 19 minutes time I would be leaving for the weekend.
=
So it is now Sunday morning in Sydney, I have turned on= my computer this morning after have a =E2=80=98family=E2=80=99 day yesterd= ay to see the usually quiet WebDNA list dominated by Brian continuing to ha= ve issues with his installation.
What does surpris= e me, and leads me to writing this email are comments pointed to myself by = Brian such as:
"TalkList= members say they will help... then they are GONE and suddenly don't ha= s access to email or skype???!!! Nothing worse than someone setting you up = to fail...!!!=E2=80=9D
Brian had a very large VHost file that he moved from= his Mac server to the Linux environment without any alterations. He believ= es that it was easier to change the configuration of the Linux/Apache serve= r than to use search and replace on his VHost file. Brian=E2=80=99s problem= s relate directly to Permissions and the relocation of his server root. I n= ote that Brian has said:=C2=A0
"=C2=A0I have no idea why Stuart thinks /Library/Webse= rver files are gonna be an issue when apache2.conf list share folder and ev= erything else.=E2=80=9D, I guess to Brian taking advice from someone th= at has 23=C2=A0operational Ubuntu 18.04 servers really doesn=E2=80=99t make= much sense.
So Brian, if you had followed my advice, you would= have been 100% operational as soon as all your files had been uploaded to = the /var/www/html=C2=A0directory and had their ownership and preferences ch= ecked, and had=C2=A0simply changed the root=C2=A0locations in your=C2=A0vho= st configuration file simply with a search and replace with your text edito= r. If you listened to the FREE advice that you were given or you could have= even asked me to do it you would have had a fully functional server many d= ays ago.
Now= I would like to see a retraction of the ill placed comments that you have = made about me.
=C2=A0
Stuart Tremain
Pharoah Lane Software
AUSTRALIA