How do I use just an IP?

macawgumbo · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2004 Posts: 165

I am not sure I want to register a domain for my home (definetly not yet). I have a Linksys router of which the ports for mail, web, ftp, etc will be forwarded. The gentoo server will be on the inside and act as a dev/prod/mail/ftp server. I was following the excellent guides for qmail and am asking myself what do I do about a domainname? If i have a static ip, then can't i just type 1.1.1.1 to get the webserver on my box? Then couldn't I just use a different port somehow to access pop3 and smtp servers? On top of that, how is the configuration going to go and what would my machine be? And domainname? nisdomainname? I just want to access it by IP and ports. Is this easy, hard, possible, you're stupid get a domain? (I don't want a domain yet)

VanDan · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Posts: 586 Location: Australia

I use dyndns: http://www.dyndns.org/

It's free. You choose from a list of domains they have available, and add your hostname to it, for example, they have homelinux.org ... and I put my host 'entropy' in front to get [url]entropy.homelinux.org[/url]

This gets around your problem of not having a fully qualified hostname. Now you do...

VanDan · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Posts: 586 Location: Australia

Ooops. I should have read more of your post before replying.
If you just want to use an IP address, then by all means use it.

As for how you set it up - most of these routers have a web-based setup thingy. You need to set up a 'virtual IP' or whatever they call it ... for our product it's a virutal IP anyway.

Otherwise if you don't have this option, then you could manually set up port forwarding for the services you want.

James Wells · n00b Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Posts: 57

Greetings,

Code · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 98

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but it allows a dynamic IP to be linked to a DNS name. As your IP changes, the DNS gets updated automagically. Not sure if it will work with Gentoo though.

http://www.no-ip.com/

macawgumbo · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2004 Posts: 165

Thanks for the feedback thus far. I was really looking at setting up a web server for external access from the internet along with email and ftp. I wanted to do it like everybody else minus the domain. My question is really how do i set up Gentoo to accept 1.1.1.1 as my "domainname" because i infact don't have one. How would an email address go? admin@1.1.1.1? And if i was to use virtual hosts (for multiple subdomains) would it be different ports, or a prefix to the ip? How would I configure qmail to access outside email and thus an email client to access this email server via IP rather than by name? Configuration of this? Please step by step for qmail, vpopmail, and (Horde?). Finally, what exactly am I to do about port forwarding? Use it or DMZ and make my whole linux box open to the world. Now that I'm thinking about it, will be using it as internal file storage via samba for some of my windows machines. So probably better to port forward and then I can close ports as needed. Any suggestions. Do I still need a firewall when only say port 80 is available for the web server and the it is port forwarded so the internet can't access anything but port 80? Thanks.

macawgumbo · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2004 Posts: 165

The real reason i dont want a domain is because i think i am getting cheap hosting and still want a dev box with web and email capabilities and dont want to have to change setting later on.
[The previous was a run-on sentence.]

macawgumbo · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2004 Posts: 165

Couldn't localhost.localdomain be the domainname for all configuration steps and then I could forward the ports to the outside and it would work? THe admin email could be my email address at the the IP? What happens if I get a new IP though? How easy is it to change it?