As the administrator of an Internet server, you must protect your data and make sure that you, your server, and your users do not interfere with the rights of others.
For background, see RFC1173: Responsibilities of Host and Network Mangers and RFC 1123: Requirements for Internet Hosts .
If you plan to provide hosting services for others, you should create a Terms of Service agreement, detailing what you will provide to your users and what behavior you do and do not allow. A careful contract will allow you to enforce reasonable behavior, remove those who do not comply, and help you protect yourself from legal challenges.
Your ISP institution's IS department will probably have similar Terms of Service, so you should familiarize yourself with them and make sure that they will not cut off your service.
For Web servers, you should define what kind of content you allow: in particular, think about copyright infringements and pirated software, as well as controversial issues such as politics, religion, and adult content. You should also define in advance how much server disk space each user may have, and how much traffic you will support. Even if you do not check that in many cases, you may need to invoke it, if a user's content becomes overwhelmingly popular.
You also have the responsibility to keep your server and data secure: see WebSTAR Security for more details.
For FTP servers, unauthorized software distribution, content of files, disk space and traffic are important issues. In addition, you should reserve the right to change FTP passwords periodically, for improved security.
For Mail servers, you should make clear what behavior is acceptable and what is not. Have defined policies on threats, harassment and spam, as well as protection for free speech. This allows you to remove users who break these rules under your own process. If you do not remove these users, you may find that others will blacklist your server and cut off your email access.
For Proxy servers, be sure that users understand the implications of the proxy system. There are logistic issues of making sure that all web browsers use the server rather than attempting to connect to the Internet directly. In addition, if you filter sites based on IP address or host name, you should make sure that your users understand why these sites are not available to them.
WebSTAR Server Suite 4, with default settings, is set to a preferred size of 10 MB (slightly higher if you are not running Virtual Memory). The default setting allows 12 connections, each, for the HTTP, FTP and Proxy servers, SMTP outgoing, SMTP incoming, POP and IMAP, 6 connections for LDAP, 50 K for the default the File Info cache, and 256 K for the default Data Cache.
You should check the Connections bar on all the monitor windows regularly. If they are often full, or the Web Connections "Busy" number is greater than zero, you may need to increase the number of connections you have allocated to the server.
There is a limit of 500 total connections on a single machine, so be sure you track how many you use for each kind of server, and leave a few for the WebSTAR Admin application. Each additional connection requires additional memory and there is a small system overhead for each open connection.
See Rules for Increasing Memory Allocation .
If you are on a slow-speed network or have a slow server, you may find that limiting the number of connections enhances performance, by keeping the server and network from getting swamped by too many requests.
To change connections, use the WebSTAR Admin application:
WebSTAR requires at least 2048 K of memory to run. If your machine does not have enough memory free, WebSTAR will not run.
Be sure to look at the information in About This Computer (under the Apple Menu) to see if you have enough memory on the machine to handle all your applications.
WebSTAR Search may require you to allocate additional memory to the server, if you are indexing very large collections.
Depending on configuration, some Plug-Ins may require additional RAM be allocated to the server application. Consult relevant documentation.
When you restart WebSTAR, it will request the larger amount of memory from the Mac OS. If that memory is not available, the application will take what it can get.
As shipped, WebSTAR provides very good performance for medium-sized sites. However, you may wish to optimize your server for your particular site.
For maximum performance, make sure all of the core Plug-Ins are installed, that the Web File Info and Data Caches have enough RAM allocated to them, that you set Persistent Connections to at least the default settings, that WebSTAR Mail Cache settings are high enough to handle the amount of server load, and so o n.
For general information on hardware, software and networking, see System Requirements ; for memory allocation guidelines, see Server Application Issues ; and to set the Web file and data cache sizes, see Caching .
In addition, the online WebSTAR Tech Note will give you updated suggestions for the most current techniques to optimize your server:
http://www.starnine.com/support/technotes/wsperformance.html
WebSTAR servers (including WebSTAR BG) will automatically shut down if they get errors from Open Transport. They will try to launch a Restart Server application, if there is one in the WebSTAR folder, by sending an Apple event.
Once launched, the included Restart Server application will quit the WebSTAR server and wait for 30 seconds. Once the 30 seconds are up, the Restart Server application will re-launch WebSTAR and then gracefully quit itself.
For information on other server restart applications that are not limited to Open transport errors, see the Extending WebSTAR page .
You can use the included Restart Server application, write an AppleScript restart script, or install a third-party replacement application for more flexibility and power, and to automatically restart after other problems.
You can create your own Restart Server application using whatever programming tools you have available. The easiest way is to write one in AppleScript.
For instance, you could develop a custom Restart Server application to backup your server whenever a TCP/IP error occurs, quit other server applications running on the same machine, etc.
Make sure that any replacement for this application is named Restart Server , has a creator code starting with " WWW ", and is located in the WebSTAR folder. In addition to launching an application called Restart Server in the same folder as WebSTAR, the server also sends an AppleEvent to the "Restart Server" application. This allows a single application to perform multiple tasks (and already be running when the server sends the restart event). The event WebSTAR sends passes the FSSpec as a parameter, but expects no reply. It's simply intended as a trigger for applications that can restart the server which may already be running. The event class is WebSTAR's WWW and the event code is REST . The application's creator has been changed from " aplt " to " WWW " for security reasons (you don't want someone requesting a script named "Restart Server"). If your replacement Restart Server file is an AppleScript applet, you need to change the creator code back to " aplt " to edit it, and then back to a creator starting with " WWW ".
The background-only version of the WebSTAR Server Suite, "WebSTAR BG", runs in the background, providing no access to the server's menus or other interface elements. Because there is no user interface, others cannot access the background-only applications, so they can't change or quit the server by accident. The background server will respond to Web, Mail, FTP and Proxy requests just like the standard WebSTAR server.
To install WebSTAR BG, launch the WebSTAR Installer and choose "Custom Install". Then choose "WebSTAR BG" from the list of options and install it in the same folder as the WebSTAR application.
Before you can use WebSTAR BG, you must first run the WebSTAR foreground server to enter the product's serial number, and admin password. This initial launch and configuration of the foreground server creates a valid WebSTAR Settings file in the same folder as the WebSTAR application. WebSTAR BG will not run properly without a preconfigured Settings file.
After launching and configuring the foreground server, you can begin using the background-only server by quitting the foreground server and launching WebSTAR BG. Both applications can reside in the same folder, but you cannot run them both at the same time. Typically, you would place an alias to WebSTAR BG in your Startup Items folder so it is launched automatically when you start your computer.
Once the WebSTAR BG application is running, you can communicate with it and configure it further by using the Admin application: see About the WebSTAR Admin Application .
To quit WebSTAR BG, use the WebSTAR Admin, and choose the Options menu Quit WebSTAR command.
There are no server monitor windows, although you can view server activity in WebSTAR Admin. To report server errors the WebSTAR BG application writes information in the WebSTAR.Messages File .
If you want to have a Web site that has some public and some private pages and you don't want to use security realms, you can run multiple WebSTAR servers on a single computer, using a different TCP/IP port number. One server can be set up with no access restrictions, while another restricts access to specified hosts.
See also: Virtual Hosts: Hosting Multiple Web Sites .
All port numbers lower than 1024 are reserved for well-known services, such as Web requests, email, FTP and so on. WebSTAR uses the standard port 80 for the web server by default. If you are running multiple servers, you need to assign a different port number for the additional servers. Although you can use any unreserved, available port numbers, the convention is to use ports in the 8500 range (such as 8501) for additional WebSTAR servers.
See also: WebSTAR Default Port Numbers .
See HTTP Port for details on specifying an alternate port number for a selected Web server. When multiple servers are set up, URLs to the alternate servers (those not using port 80) must specify the appropriate port number. For example:
http://www.domain.com:8502/privatedoc.html
If you want to run multiple servers on different computers, they each need a unique serial number.
would use the same machine as "www.domain.com", but an alternate web server.
Although WebSTAR allows you to run multiple copies of the server application, you cannot run multiple FTP, Mail or Proxy servers . Therefore, to reduce memory usage and avoid confusion, you should remove the FTP and Proxy Plug-Ins from the alternate web server's Plug-Ins folder.
WebSTAR servers (Web, FTP, Mail and Proxy) all use the same Log Archiver processing to make copies of their associated log file at scheduled intervals. This roll-over is disabled by default: you must use the WebSTAR Admin application to start or change the schedule. For more information, see Log Archiving .