How would I use the Pandora as a server?

[Latte guy]

I hope to get my website up-and-running early next year, in fact my Christmas present this year is a domain name from my Dad! Right now I think that finding a good domain name is harder than scripting in HTML :lol:


I know the basics of HTML, and CSS (Still learning web-design over the school-holidays) and when I heard I could use my Pandora as a server this made me very excited! So are there any tutorials on this? I went over-and-over information about domains, hosts and name servers, but how can I use my Pandora as a server/host for my website, is there an app to use so I can point my domain to the files on my Pandora? Sorry for a bit of a newbie question, but I am still learning


I know it is not the ideal-hosting device, but if I connected an external Hard-Drive to the Pandora, and then got my domain to point to that? Just an idea...

 

[Tempel]

You'd get yourself a Pandora... and then leave it closed? There are far better alternatives when it comes to setting up a permanent server; I have a Sheevaplug, and it's pretty spectacular as my web/torrent/backup server, while being cheaper and more readily available than a Pandora.


But since you asked, I'll try to give a brief summary: once your domain is pointing at your IP address (I'll assume you know how to do this, because I don't ), the rest isn't very hard. You probably have a router between your Pandora and the internet, so you need to configure NAT (aka port forwarding) on your router; have it forward port 80 (the standard for HTTP) to your Pandora. Then install an HTTP server on your Pandora; I'm fond of lighttpd, which can be installed with "opkg install lighttpd". Then configure your server so that its root directory is whichever directory you want to share.


Of course, if you decide to use a different device as your server, just replace all instances of "Pandora" with "different device"; these instructions are a really basic level and therefore universal.

 

[Latte guy]

Thanks for the info


I wasn't planning on getting the Pandora to host a full-time site, but I just saw the information about using it as a server and wondered what would be involved. The Sheevaplug sure does look good, especially for $99, but it turns out from some suppliers it can cost more to deliver to AU than the device itself... :rolleyes:


Certainly something I will look out for in future though, thanks

 

[WizardStan]

For a server, BeagleBoard is my standard response. I've had one running ssh/vnc/http/torrent servers (and even a Minecraft server for a brief period, but that was just a bit past it's limit) for about 2 years now and it's great. It's also partially compatible with the Pandora, so that's been a major plus in debugging.

 

[chole]

I back up the SheevaPlug idea. I use it as an application server to run various apps that I want centralized, mostly Pidgin -- which I use for all my AIM/Yahoo/LJ/Facebook communication, Kate -- which I use as a todo list, and KNotes -- for my lists of stuff. They're easy to run via ssh from any computer on the Internet with negligible performance hit, and I can just pick up where I left off when I move from place to place. It's also my web proxy server, my mail server, my storage server (for when I need to move files between work and home, not for long term storage), and the central point for feeding my nethack addiction. I'm buying a house in three days (yay), and I will quite possibly be buying more Plugs to connect to web cams so I can monitor my home from afar.


My Pandora will have the usual ssh server so I can copy my files to and from it and remotely run arbitrary emulators without having to copy ROMs to every single computer I use.

 

[ibisum]

Sheevaplug is good (except for the power/heat issue, which sucks), but Beagleboard is way, way better .. plus you have the advantage of being able to run the same bins on Beagle as you might on Pandora, if you set things up properly ..

 

[foxblock]

If you decide to go with your Pandora you will also need to get a DynDNS client running as your local IP usually changes every 24 hours due to a forced reconnect.


Proper routers already have such a functions installed so your server will always be available via this address regardless of IP.


Apart from that don't forget to take out your battery before running the Pandora from wire for a long time


foxblock out

 

[WizardStan]

If you decide to go with your Pandora you will also need to get a DynDNS client running as your local IP usually changes every 24 hours due to a forced reconnect.


Proper routers already have such a functions installed so your server will always be available via this address regardless of IP.

zoneedit.com is such a dynamic DNS service, and updating your DNS is nothing more than "visiting" a certain page with your username and password. I've got a wget cronjob that takes care of it for me. No special client required.

 

[chole]

If you decide to go with your Pandora you will also need to get a DynDNS client running as your local IP usually changes every 24 hours due to a forced reconnect.

This is not necessarily true if you have your own regular domain. I do it the ghetto way: I have a regular domain and a cgi script at "http://<my-domain>/ip/". My little ARM device runs curl or wget or something like that every few minutes, and the cgi script writes to a text file the most recently learned IP address. This could easily be used to, say, put a .htaccess file in "http://<my-domain>/pandora/" that will rewrite any call to that area to the corresponding directory on the Pandora (or, if you like being lazy like me, a single index.html file that redirects to the IP address of the Pandora, so it won't rewrite anything, just bring over requests to that one url.