PREFACE
If you have decided it’s time to serve some information, either to the whole world via the Internet or to a single organization, large or small, via an intranet, this may be the book for you. Our first job is to turn that ‘may’ into a yes or a no. If you want a succinct–that is, short and inexpensive–guide to establishing a complete Internet server, complete with FTP, listserv, and Web servers, read on. If you really want a 600-page dissertation on a project that might take you about 30 minutes, then put this back before you get the cover dirty.
As we see it, there are three types of people still reading:
- Mac addicts who will use a Mac for their Internet server even if they have to write the code themselves,
- Unix techies or Windows drones who thought they might get a cheap laugh at the Mac from this book, and
- Users who are considering Macs for their Internet server, but aren’t sure if Macs are up to it.
To the Mac addicts, we’d like to say: Relax. Setting up a solid, secure Mac Internet server is just as easy as installing any Mac application. It might take as little as 15 minutes (see Section 6.7.1).
To the Unix and Windows proponents: Would you be willing to offer $10,000 to the first person in the Internet community of hackers who successfully hacks into your Unix or Windows Web server? We’ve found several such hacking challenges on the Web, and all were running a Mac server. And only recently has one had to pay up (see Section 2.1.1).
And to those of you on the fence, we’ll just say: If you want an Internet server that takes about 30 minutes to set up and can handle just as many hits, yet can withstand advertised hacking challenges, you might want to look closely at the Mac. Surveys have shown that the proportion of Mac servers on the Web is far greater than the overall Mac market share (see Section 2.1.1). If you want a Web server running on an operating system that requires years of training to administer, go with Unix. If you’re really looking forward to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), you might look into Windows®.
If you’re still with us, dear Reader, you should be leaning strongly toward a Mac server. Now we just have to convince you to buy this book.
SCOPE
Let’s begin by making sure you understand the scope of the material presented in this book.
Emphasis on information servers, not clients. Downloading a file with ftp, sending e-mail, or surfing the Web are client activities. Setting up a secure ftp environment, redistributing an incoming message to a mailing list, or making a Web home page available are server activities. Most Internet-related books deal only with the client side of the Internet. This is not a book about using Web browsers like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, nor is it a book of "cool" sites. Having said that, Chapter 5 helps you install and configure client software so you can review the information on your own server.
Not just the Web. Of the books available that do describe how to set up an Internet server, the focus is almost always on a Web server. This book is about designing and maintaining a server to support ftp (file transfer protocol), listservs (e-mail access to information), as well as the Web.
Emphasis on organizing your information. From the client’s perspective, a good server is not necessarily determined by fancy presentation, but rather by the quality and organization of the information. We can’t help you with your information quality; however, we have included some tips and guidance to make it easier to navigate your server and find information.
Establishing a Mac OS-based information server. Many of the principles in this book apply to servers using any of the Unix and Microsoft Windows variants, as well as to Mac OS servers. However, this book will have much shorter chapters on installing software, configuring the system, and administering the server.
PREREQUISITES
Degree of Macintosh proficiency. In setting up a Macintosh server, you need a basic familiarity with configuring and operating the Mac OS. For example, you should understand the basics of folders, files, system extensions and control panels, and software installation. If you can perform these tasks, you can run an Internet server.
Established local area networks. For those wishing to set up an Internet server on a local area network (LAN), this book assumes the LAN has already been established. This book does not discuss how to set up Macintosh networks, although some pointers for further information are provided. For the most part, we provide instructions for connecting a single Macintosh (from a home or business) to the Internet.
WHY THIS BOOK
If you are still reading, either you are lucky enough to have too much time on your hands, or you belong to the intended audience and have satisfied the prerequisites. The next question to ask yourself is whether the format of this book is going to help you. To answer this question, consider our motivations for writing the book.
Dave’s Reasons: I have had the chance to operate Unix systems (as a user, not an administrator), Windows systems, and Macintoshes over the past decade or so. Unix has its advantages in where you have multi-user systems, where you have armies of system administrators available if you have a problem, and where you just need to have a command line interface. It is, however, by no means easy or fun. Microsoft Windows® I have simply learned to dislike. Aside from the many technical hassles of configuration and administration, Windows simply is not as pleasant to use as the Mac OS. Macintosh did windows first and still does it better.
By co-authoring this book, I wanted to learn more about Macs so I would have even more reasons to love ’em. Not surprisingly–at least to Mac afficionados–I have confirmed all of my preconceived notions and found very few trouble spots. So that’s why there is a Mac version of the book. Phil deserves the credit for getting a contract for a Mac version and for the reasons why this book is laid out the way it is.
Phil’s Reasons: Over the past couple of years, I have been responsible for establishing and supporting information and information servers on Unix and Windows NT platforms. What frustrated me in the beginning was the lack of a good overview of what software I should be installing, where I could get it, and how I could organize my information to make its presentation most effective. I would be misleading you if I said sources, either online or printed, were not available today to help. In fact, the opposite is true. The problem is that there is so much information, it is hard to know where to start.
My goal is to make this cookbook that place to start. You decide with our help what to cook and then gather a set of ingredients–software obtained free from the Internet, commercial software, and of course the information itself. You put these ingredients together using the right utensils and follow steps a through z. [Dave’s note: On the Mac, it’s usually steps a through e.] The result should be an Internet feast for a world of information consumers. The problem for me is that I have had virtually no exposure to the Mac. Nevertheless, I do recognize the need for a Mac version of this Cookbook and am very grateful that Dave has agreed to provide the technical impetus. Together we hope you find this book informative and of lasting value.
THE COOKBOOK FORMAT
Like a cookbook, this book presents the ingredients and procedures in a recipe format. This cookbook goes one step further in that it contains a global recipe–a recipe of recipes–to get you to all the other recipes. You can also think of the global recipe as a roadmap. With a traditional map, you begin with something that covers a large area–the introduction in this book–and gradually homes in on where you need to go–individual chapters and sections.
Choosing the route raises questions: Do I go on the Interstate? Do I take the scenic route? In Web terms, chooseing your route leads to questions like: Should I support video clips? Is gopher still necessary? Which is the most secure of the Web servers? Should I support a forms interface? Should I support Java applets for access from Java-ready browsers?
Beyond answering the global questions, each chapter takes pieces of the global recipe, provides a list of software ingredients and where you can get them, and describes in a step-by-step recipe how to put them together to get the job done. But getting the software installed is the beginning, not the end, of the process.
A significant portion of this book provides recipes and cooking tips for organizing your information for effective access, creating meaningful links between items of data, and effectively using graphics, frames, and clickable maps for dining on and serving the information. How sophisticated you want your server to be depends on how much you want to learn about such tools as Perl, HTML frames, Java, and JavaScript. People learn best from examples, so the book includes several scenarios, real and imaginary, to illustrate what you can do. For the real ones, code can be downloaded from the information server associated with this book and used as a template for your own information servers.
If you are still undecided about whether this book meets your needs, look at the Global Recipe (Chapter 1) and the more traditional form for presenting this recipe, the Table of Contents. You can do this by continuing to read this book or by visiting the information server. (Yes, the book’s information server runs on a Mac.)
YOUR OBLIGATION
Setting up an information server can be fun and rewarding if accessed by lots of folks or by the few people you really want to access it. Remember, however, that how the information is presented is a minor issue compared to the question of what information is presented. Just as we have an obligation to write the best possible book we can so that we don’t take your money under false pretenses, you have an obligation to serve up the best information on your Internet server so as not to waste anyone’s time. The community at large has, so far, fulfilled this obligation.
SO FINALLY...
The World-Wide Web has come a long way in a short time from its origin as a way for physicists to distribute experimental results and papers. While it may or may not be the greatest innovation since sliced bread, neither is it completely without its advantages. The Web has a lot of growing up to do, a lot of growing pains to overcome, and everyone who participates has a chance to guide its growth. We hope this book helps you make your contribution to the Web’s future.
Conventions
Special Terms
Convention Definition http://www.sdsc.edu/Cookbook/ Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for finding information on the Web. ftp://ftp.sdsc.edu/pub/cookbook/ A URL beginning ftp may also be accessed using anonymous ftp. http://www.sdsc.edu/-
Cookbook/MacURLs spanning more than one line are hyphenated following a slash (/). Hyphens located elsewhere in a URL are part of the URL. <TEXTAREA NAME="{name}" ROWS="{size}" COLS="{size}"> {optional text} </TEXTAREA> HTML tag. The curly braces ({}) enclose material to be entered by the user and are not present in the actual tag. Listservers Throughout this book, the first use of a new term is given in italics and is defined in the Glossary. Mac OS Operating Systems
Depending on how old your Mac is or how religiously you’ve upgraded your Mac OS, you might have any one of a number of Mac OS versions on your computer. In this book, we will be working with Mac OS 8, since it is the latest version available. For those of you waiting to upgrade, however, we will try to identify differences between version 8 and versions 7.5 and 7.6. They won’t be too substantial, although Mac OS 8 includes some Internet-related features, such as Personal Web Sharing, which may not available in all of the incarnations of version 7.
Beyond Mac OS 8, the Mac OS picture is less clear at this point. In 1998, Apple is scheduled to release its next-generation operating system, code-named Rhapsody. Once Rhapsody hits the streets, Apple’s publicized plans call for developing both Rhapsody and the Mac OS. Current and future versions of the Mac OS would run on top of Rhapsody, so Mac users will still be able to run Mac OS applications, such as those discussed in this book. There will also be Rhapsody-native applications, but because they did not exist while we were writing this book, Rhapsody and Rhapsody applications are not discussed here.
What is an Internet-Enhanced Book?
While this book offers a concise description of building and maintaining an Internet information server, it cannot hope to stay current for long, given the speed at which the Internet is evolving. Having a CD-ROM stuck in the back helps because it provides more information than in the book, but it too becomes dated quickly. "Internet-enhanced" means, in effect, that we use the Internet as a book supplement, which can be updated continuously and made available to you long after the book has been published. The following diagram indicates how this works.
An Internet-Enhanced Book
This book summarizes lasting information on why to establish an information server and how to establish and maintain that server. It contains many pointers–in the form of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)–to additional sources of information and to software that you will need. Those pointers, as hypertext links, are available on an Internet server at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), a national laboratory for computational science and engineering. This serves two purposes.
First, you don’t have to type these pointers each time you wish to visit a site. All you have to do is remember, or add to the hotlist of your favorite Web browser, a single pointer:
Second, and most important, we can keep this list of pointers on the SDSC server current! Thus, while a pointer in this book is considered the best reference at the time of writing, it may not be the best reference at the time of reading. However, the current reference is available to you simply by connecting to the SDSC server. This is important, since Internet technology is changing faster than the time it takes to provide new editions of a book. Through the information server, we can regularly supplement the book with current information.
Finding current information with the server is easy. The server provides several "views" that you can use. One view is simply the table of contents. By clicking on the section that corresponds to the one you are reading in the book, you will get a list of pointers to current information. Another view is the Global Recipe, which we introduce in Chapter One and which gives an overview of the steps in establishing an information server. Another traditional view is the Index. The corresponding electronic view is to search by keyword.
Why don't we put the whole book online and update that? Maybe this will work for future generations, but for now many folks, us included, like the feel of a book in our hands and are comfortable navigating that medium. If you are reading this in the bookstore, or from someone else’s copy, at this point you may be thinking: Why buy the book? I’ll just jot down the pointer above and read the Web site. You are welcome to do that, of course. However, we think the combination of book and Internet server will provide the most useful and usable information.
You may also be thinking: How will they keep all the pointers to pertinent information and software current? In part, the answer is that you will help us. There is a Reader’s Corner accessible on the server for you to report pointers to sites that you think should be included in the Cookbook. We will frequently review these suggestions and, if appropriate, add them first to the server, and later to future editions of this book.
Involving the reader in the material they are reading, to the point where they begin to make their own contributions, seems to us a very good use of the Internet. In fact, the Internet has supported many such projects, such as Perl, VRML, and others, not to mention the community of Mac OS shareware developers. The Internet has provided a communication channel between reader and author to enhance the quality and longevity of the book. In other words, the book is "Internet-enhanced."
