EdTech 552: Server Project Report

Matthew Long
The purpose of this project was to set up a web server on our own computers. This server was used to host a personal website which was accessible to the public over the internet. I created the server using my home PC which is running Windows Vista Home Premium. The screenshot below is meant to show that my PC is connected to the internet via a USB wireless modem, which is not available as an option on Cisco Packet Tracer so I chose to display it instead as a DSL modem. The USB modem is not connected to a wireless router and instead directly connects to the Verizon Wireless Broadband Access (Rev-A) network.

WAMPServer
I first downloaded the 32 bit version of WAMPServer from http://www.wampserver.com

After the software was installed I started the server and opened the localhost page via the WAMPServer icon in the system tray.

I turned on Intranet settings which had not been previously configured and tried to access phpMyAdmin. This is when I first ran into trouble as evidenced by the screenshot below.

I was confused as I had been following along with the videos provided by Dr. Hung and it had mentioned that you could get locked out of the site but only after changing the settings within phpMyAdmin. I tried accessing phpMyAdmin directly from the WAMPServer system tray icon, and by manually typing the link into the address bar but both produced the same 403 Forbidden result.

I first checked the checked config.inc.php but the highlighted section of code indicates that I was not locked out due to the site requiring a password.

I then searched on Google for fixes to the error message I was getting and obtained the idea to follow the directions located in the comment section of the phpMyAdmin configuration file.

I also changed the browser used by WAMPServer from Internet Explorer to Mozilla FireFox as I was not sure whether it was a possibility or not that IE was causing the error.

I then restarted all of the servers services.

This allowed me to access phpMyAdmin.

I changed the password for the root@localhost user account.

I then received the error message mentioned in the video about getting locked out due to changing the password.

After receiving the error message mentioned in the video I changed the configuration file to include the new password.

This allowed me access to phpMyAdmin once again.

I then downloaded a free CSS website template from http://www.styleshout.com and modified it into my webpage. I modified the index.html file to index_BAK to disable it and established my newly made webpage as the index file in the root folder.

I then opened up a web browser and tested my site on the localhost.

No-IP
I then signed up for an account with the dynamic DNS service provider No-IP at http://www.no-ip.com/ This service links a host name to a dynamic IP address.

I then created my host name.

I also downloaded and installed the Dynamic DNS update software. After installing the software I switched over to the administrator account on my computer. I did this because the software had installed under the folder linked to that account and could not be accessed by other users. Looking back now I probably should have been using this account the entire time.

After logging into my administrator account, I went to publish my server to the web using No-IP. I opened up the NoIP software, logged in to my account, and added my host to the service .

I then had others try to access my site but it would not work for them and they received HTTP 404 errors. I thought it might have something to do with enabling DMZ or port forwarding but wasnt sure what to do as I dont use a router. I tried assigning the IP address given in Dr. Hungs video to my USB modem even though I hadnt done anything with DMZ or port forwarding for my server.

This resulted in me losing my internet connection so I reset these settings to default. I was stuck so I decided to uninstall and reinstall WAMPServer under the administrator account thinking that the fact that I had installed it under another user account might have messed up some configuration. This turned out to be quite frustrating as I was not even able to access my localhost after the reinstall. I uninstalled and reinstalled several different times with the same result.

After the third or fourth reinstall I was able to access the localhost but got a different error message whenever I tried to open phpMyAdmin.

I posted my problems to the discussion board and then followed Dr. Hungs suggestions which including checking to make sure that WAMPServer was running and the WAMPServer icon in the system tray was green indicating that it was. The server also showed up in the services list of Windows Task Manager.

I also ran the netstat a | find LISTENING command to check to see which of my computer ports were open for communication with outside traffic. It showed Port 80, the port used by most web servers was open.

I also used http://www.canyouseeme.org Open Port Check Tool to see if Port 80 was open. The request timed out so it seemed that something was wrong.

At this point I looked for other possible sources that might be denying me access. I checked my firewall settings and changed the setting that was blocking the Apache HTTP server internet access to providing full internet access. This didnt work so I also changed the firewall settings for internet access for the PHP CLI program from outgoing to full which changed the error message to 403 Forbidden.

I also opened the Apache configuration file to change ports from 80 to 81 and then restarted the Apache service.

I went back to the WAMPServer homepage on localhost and tried the different ways of accessing phpMyAdmin by clicking either of the links to phpmyadmin under Tools or Your Aliases but still received the 403 error message.

I decided to try typing in the http://localhost:81/phpmyadmin manually in the address bar and gained access. I had to re-enter a password for the root user

I once again edited privileges for the root user and the config.inc.php file to include the new password.

I could not access phpMyAdmin via the WAMPServer system tray icon with the locahost port set to 81 in the httpd.conf file. I assigned port 80 to the php port in the phpMyAdmin configuration file.

This change didnt have any effect so I deleted the port number and switched back to port 80 in httpd.conf file. After searching through more troubleshooting advice I finally found the solution. All I did was commented out deny from all line in the phpmyadmin.conf alias file.

I restarted all services, logged into No-IP and attempted to view my site via the host name and it worked!

Conclusion
This project served as an extreme lesson in troubleshooting for me. I learned a much greater appreciation for how many different configuration files go into running a program. I gained knowledge about how my USB modem works and how my firewall can be configured at a more custom level. I think this is a great exercise to use for teaching people about servers and router/firewall configuration. Setting up a server is a skill that is a must for IT/School Technology Coordinator and this project was a good introduction to doing it.