Sun Microsystems iPlanet Web Server, Installation Manual

Page: 14 / 62

Other Technical Requirements
14 iPlanet Web Server, FastTrack Edition Installation Guide • June 2000
Other Technical Requirements
Once you have the proper hardware and software necessary to install iPlanet Web
Server, you should make sure that you meet the following requirements:
• You know the host name and IP address of your server computer.
• Your server has a DNS alias. For information on creating a DNS alias for your
server, see “Creating a DNS Alias for the Server” on page 14.
• Your server has a user account on Unix, Linux, or NT. See “Unix and Linux
User Accounts for the Server” on page 14 or “Windows NT User Accounts for
the Server” on page 15 for more information.
• You have two port numbers - one for the Administration Server and the other
for the first iPlanet Web Server server instance. For information on choosing
port numbers for your server, see “Choosing Unique Port Numbers” on
page 16.
Creating a DNS Alias for the Server
If your server will run on one machine among many in a network, you or your
system administrator should set up a DNS CNAME record or an alias that points to
the actual server machine. Later, you can change the actual hostname or IP address
of the server machine without having to change all URLs that point to the server
machine.
For example, you might call the server my_server.my_company.
com
and then use an
alias like
www
.my_company.
com
. So the URLs to documents on your server would
always use the www alias instead of my_server.
Unix and Linux User Accounts for the Server
When the iPlanet Web Server starts, it runs with a Unix or Linux user account that
you specify during installation. Any child processes of the server are created with
this account as the owner. It is best to create a Unix or Linux account for the server
that has restricted access to your system resources. The account needs read
permissions for the configuration files and write permissions for the
logs
directory. For security reasons, the user account shouldn’t have write permissions
to some of the configuration files, though some, such as the access control files,
should be group writable.