I had a number of people request a copy of this image, none of wh= om have taken up the offer. One user requested that I build an image that a= nyone could use on any platform. However this is not possible for cloud ser= vers as each cloud provider has their own flavour of Ubuntu tuned to their = hosting configuration. The instructions that I publish will work if you fol= low the steps on any host and/or new Ubuntu 18.0 installation.
I must preface this with the fact that everything that i have done f= or Brian was at no charge, purely a gesture of good will that I extend to a= ll members of this list.
Brian was unable to log i= nto the Ubuntu 18.04 Droplet that he created. I offered to meet him on Skyp= e to help him get past his hurdle - less than a minute later I had connecte= d to the Droplet (a virtual server) using ssh, Brian had some confusion as = to how that was achieved, and had not received the image that I had shared = with him from DigitalOcean. So to make things easier and so that he didn=E2= =80=99t have to go backwards I simply completed the installation from the i= nstructions=C2=A0that I had published.
Less than 2= 0 minutes later Brian was the owner of a shiny new Ubuntu 18.04 server comp= lete with a working installation of WebDNA server that was only requiring a= license number.
As you will know, if you have rea= d the published instructions, Webmin is also installed on the Droplet.
What happened next is purely comical, if I published t= he emails that I received and you read the warnings that I provided, plus t= he repeated advice that I gave, =C2=A0you would see exactly where Brian=E2= =80=99s problems are.
From here all Brian needed t= o do was upload his websites to /var/www/html and set up his Virtual hosts = - at this stage WebDNA was 100% functional with all the standard file exten= sions that are installed with the WebDNA installer.
As an additional task I set up two Virtual Hosts, one on 80 the other on = 443 with the ssl certificate that he supplied so that he could have a worki= ng reference.
However Brian had other plans, he wa= nted to create a new directory /Library/Websites to be the root directory o= f his webserver, remember this is the same person that has had no experienc= e with a Linux server, he has had experience with a Mac server so I believe= d that he had a good sense of being able to manage a Linux Server. Brian di= dn=E2=80=99t want to use the installed Webmin, he wanted to do all Apache c= onfiguration by uploading files with FTP however he didn=E2=80=99t have a F= TP client.
Brian, you may remember the Skype messa= ge that I sent you expressing my concern that if you work outside the stand= ard installation you would break it.
For the rest = of the week I continued to help him, answer his questions, provide advice. = All the time doing my own work that Brian=E2=80=99s emails were interruptin= g. As I live in Sydney there were times that I was not able to answer him i= mmediately due to the 10 hour time difference.
The= n on Friday afternoon (Sydney time) I received yet another email from Brian= - he had locked himself out of his server, yes, I fixed this for him too, = repaired his non-root user with sudo privileges and advised him that in 19 = minutes time I would be leaving for the weekend.
S= o it is now Sunday morning in Sydney, I have turned on my computer this mor= ning after have a =E2=80=98family=E2=80=99 day yesterday to see the usually= quiet WebDNA list dominated by Brian continuing to have issues with his in= stallation.
What does surprise me, and leads me to= writing this email are comments pointed to myself by Brian such as:
<= div>"
TalkList members say they wil= l help... then they are GONE and suddenly don't has access to email or = skype???!!! Nothing worse than someone setting you up to fail...!!!=E2=80=9D