I have a couple of websites online that I do for fun so I decided to stop paying the monthly fee to host them since they make me no money.

The problem is that after using the wonderful Drupal sitemap module to submit my site to Google, I am getting a "General HTTP error" from Google. Upon further inspection, I have discovered that Google does not index private IP addresses:

"IP in excluded range – The IP address is in a private address space, reserved for local use (for instance 127.0.0.1). See RFC 1918 for information on private IP ranges."

Does anyone have any idea how I could bypass that? After all the work I went through to set up MySQL, PHP and configure Apache on my mac, this is a real deal breaker. I am REALLY not looking forward to setting up my site on a real host just because Google won’t index it.

My domain is http://www.hiphopco-op.com.

Please help.

One thing I’d like to ask – anyone else notice that DNS update is slow in updating – or not working at all? I had to do the bulk update from dyndns.org instead because it was too slow. (haven’t updated yet as of this writing when I deliberately tested it) Anyone know howto tweak it to update faster?

Also, on many Linux distributions security patches are avilable in a very user friendly way, or via a single command line function. Linux is not as easy to use as a Mac all the time, but updates, especially in teh more user-friendly distros, are fairly painless in my experience.

Otherwise I found this article interesting. But please keep in mind that while Macs are generally well designed and good for certian applications, they have faults too.

[WM: The issue in this article was web server software, not security and not a Mac vs. Windows debate. I purchased the second IBM PC sold in Atlanta. I’ve been in the business since DOS 1.0 and have installed and supported thousands of Windows machines over the years. Your suggestion that Microsoft couldn’t include a web server for technical reasons is mistaken. It was purely a marketing decision. Their Personal Web Server, a trimmed down IIS, was a part of virtually every Windows OS going back to Windows 95. The fact that Apache runs fine under Windows XP pretty well documents that a web server has no problems with the OS. So we stand by our statement that Microsoft intentionally crippled Windows XP by not including a web server.]

[WM: Are you inside your firewall when you try to access your site using the dyndns domain name? If so, some NAT routers won’t let you go out and back in so try accessing your site from your neighbor’s house. If it still doesn’t work, here are two possible reasons. Some ISP’s block Port 80 (HTTP) access to machines inside their network. The easiest way to test where the problem is would be to plug your web server (BRIEFLY) into your DSL modem and see if anyone else can get to your web page. If not, it’s the port 80 problem. You can search our site for port 80, and there are some ways to solve this. If your site is accessible, then there’s an incorrect setting on your router/firewall. Good luck. ]

– Mach, which was originally developed by Project Mach at Carnegie-Mellon University, and later enhanced by the Open Software Foundation (now The Open Group).

– 4.4BSD-Lite2, originated in UC Berkeley’s Computer Systems Research Group and developed by a large number of contributors:

* FreeBSD, the primary reference platform for Darwin’s BSD kernel development.
* NetBSD, the upstream source for a significant portion of Darwin’s user-space commands and tools.
* OpenBSD, with its focus on robustness and security and its integrated cryptography, provides OpenSSH for secure remote access.

I am looking forward to the future chapters.

JM, San Diego, CA

[WM: Since I’m obviously not in it for the money, I have to tell you that the greatest reward anyone could ever receive from a blog is appreciative readers. Thanks.]

If you want people on the Internet or your local network to be able to access your web site, you also need to enable Personal Web Sharing under the Firewall tab."

Using 10.3.8, my firewall tab won’t let me stop access to port 80, while the web service is running. I take this to mean that even if I only want to test Apache locally, the Internet has access to my test pages. Am I missing something?

[You’re absolutely right. You have to enable Personal Web Sharing under the Firewall tab. We covered this in our Network Security article, but thanks for reinforcing it. As for why you can’t shut off port 80 while the web server is running, keep in mind that the firewall is protecting the service port on your server from everybody, not just folks on the Internet. If you want to use your server on your local area network without having to worry about firewalls, then you need to turn off the Mac’s firewall and install a hardware-based firewall/router between your LAN and your Internet connection (NOT recommended).]

You should check out ClarkConnect if you think administrating a Linux server is difficult. You could have an old x86 box up and running in 30 minutes doing everything you have the mac mini doing and for a hell of a lot cheaper.

But in fairness doing it on the mini is cool. But just saying I wouldn’t waste my mac mini like that 😉

[WM: Yeah. I’ve used ClarkConnect for many years and SMEserver, too. I like both of them. They’re great server products, but not for folks just getting their feet wet with a server. You also need a pretty extensive Linux background to add much of anything to either type of box because both companies go out of their way to try to get you to use their paid-for stuff. And then there are the security patches. Unless you buy the commercial versions, it’s up to you to track down the updates and get them installed. And both of them are built on old versions of RedHat Linux that are no longer supported by RedHat which might make some think twice about going this route. But, you’re right, if you have an old x86 box lying around and you know what you’re doing, either of these server platforms would work great.]

Secondly, MacOS X has a Mach microkernel, with a userland derived primarily from FreeBSD, but also including components from other *BSD implementations. This is not the same thing as saying that MacOS X includes FreeBSD, or is built on top of it. This is a subtle but important difference, since many *nix applications will run out of the box on MacOS X, because they don’t delve deep into the kernel or the filesystem. However, other applications that do dig down deep will need quite a bit of work to be ported to MacOS X.

[WM: I didn’t get into a lot of detail on POP3 and IMAP because I don’t think it’s a good idea for most folks. The Postfix Enabler uses the UW-IMAP package, I think, for POP3 and IMAP services.]

[WM: Here’s a whole list of alternatives for remote access.]