On 23.12.2011 11:53, Paul Grenyer wrote:
Hi All
I want create a small virtual machine running linux with pretty much only Apache2 to serve some static web content and proxy on to other servers. The idea being this is the only internet facing instance I have. Any suggestions for a small easy to use linux distor?
In my experience, the answer to this would be "whatever you are most comfortable administering" - I generally stick to RedHat/CentOS based distro's at the moment as thats what I use on a daily basis at work and home, but I've previously run things of this sort on Debian, Ubuntu and even Gentoo in the past.
I have heard good things about the Ubuntu-based Turnkey pre-built system images (such as their generic LAMP appliance http://www.turnkeylinux.org/lampstack) - you can download a CD ISO, VM Image (VMDK,OVF) or even spin up an instance in Amazon EC2. Generally I have heard good things about them from Debian/Ubuntu admins and developers, who don't want the hassle of building systems to do common jobs, and bad things from people who want to tinker or aren't comfortable with APT.
The things to watch for are creating a machine thats as barebones as you need it to be, and keeping it secure and updated - with CentOS, for example, running a text-mode installation still pulls in over 400 packages, so working out then specifying exact package names in a KickStart file is often worth the effort. There are equivalents to the KickStart mechanism used by Anaconda in RHEL and CentOS with most distro installations.
Another thing to watch is stability and ongoing support - worth choosing an LTS version of your chosen distro if this is applicable.
Just my thoughts - sorry if I rambled on, but hope some of that is helpful.
Jim