What Makes XAMPP So Special

Let’s say you’re installing Apache in Windows. You take the time to set everything up and you start running your website. The problem is that you can’t actually do anything lucrative on the site that doesn’t involve static pages unless you have an SQL server. You then install your favorite SQL server application and realize that you still haven’t installed PHP. The list goes on and on until you’re driven nuts by the complexity of an installation which may take hours.

Here’s where XAMPP comes in. Here you have an application that not only installs all these things you need to run the perfect website, but it also lets you install them as Windows services. Such services allow your computer to run Apache and everything else whenever your computer starts. The applications run silently in the background and don’t take up as many resources as they would if you execute them manually.

How to Install XAMPP

If you really want to give XAMPP a try, go to their download page here and scroll down to the latest version of XAMPP. Click the “Installer” link and download the app, then continue as follows:

1: Browse to the folder to which you downloaded the application and open it up.

2: Select a language in the installer window and click “OK.” You might get a notice yapping about UAC in Windows if you use Vista or Windows 7. Just click “OK” and ignore it. I’ll talk about UAC in the next section.

3: Click “Next” to continue the installation after it shows you the welcome message nobody reads.

4: Specify a destination folder for the application. Your best bet is to leave it in the default location (“C:\xampp”), since this will make access much easier for you. Click “Next” once you’ve finished this.

5: You’re now seeing a window like this:

Here’s where you can install any of the component applications as services. I highly recommend at least installing MySQL and Apache as a service. Click “Install” once you’re finished. The rest of the process is pretty much self explanatory. Once you install the application, browse to the folder where it installed and check the “htdocs” folder. You can place files in that folder so they show up on your site.

Disabling UAC

If you want to run XAMPP properly, you have to disable User Account Control in your computer. This feature of Windows attempted to enhance the security of your computer by making you approve the actions of programs that you run. Although it sounded like a cute idea, it was proven to be ineffective. If you run a Windows version earlier than Vista, you don’t need to do this:

1: Press “Start + R” on your computer. Your “Start” key is next to either “Alt” key on the keyboard.

2: Type “msconfig” and press “Enter”.

3: Navigate to the “Tools” tab, select “Change UAC Settings” and click “Launch” below the list of tools.

4: Move the slider in the settings window to “Never notify” and click “OK.” You have now disabled UAC.

Once you’re finished with this, you can expect XAMPP to run smoothly and your web server’s ready for action!

Note: If you just want to have a quick setup of LAMP server, follow the guide here.

Installing Apache

Getting apache onto your Ubuntu machine is easy. Using either the Synaptic Package Manager, Ubuntu Software Center, search and install the “apache2” module. Alternatively, you can open a terminal and type the following command:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Once the installation finished, open a browser and go to the URL “http://localhost“. If you see the word “It Works!“, then your installation of apache is successful.

Configuring Apache

Start, Stop and Restart Apache

After you have installed Apache, it will be added to the init.d list and will auto start whenever you boot up your computer. The following commands allow you to start, restart, stop Apache.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start   #start apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop   #stop apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart   #restart apache

To prevent Apache from autostart when booting up:

sudo update-rc.d -f apache2 remove

To restore Apache back to the autostart list:

sudo update-rc.d apache2 defaults

Note: the above commands will work in debian-based distro (including Ubuntu) only.

Changing the default localhost folder

By default, apache will operate on the “/var/www” folder. This means that whatever files you place in this /var/www folder will be visible from the URL http://localhost. In some instances, you may want the “localhost” to point to another folder instead, say /home/user/public_html. Here is how you do it:

First, make sure the /home/damien/public_html folder exists. Create a simple html file, name it index.html and place it in the public_html folder.

Open a terminal and type:

gksu gedit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Change DocumentRoot /var/www to DocumentRoot /home/user/public_html.

Change <Directory /var/www/> to <Directory /home/user/public_html/>.

Save and exit the file.

Restart the apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now, in your browser, reload the URL http://localhost. You should see the html file that you have placed in the public_html folder.

Configuring different sites

The above trick allows you to change the default operating folder of apache, however, some of you might not want to override the default settings. An alternative is to create multiple sites and point apache to the active site.

Create a new settings file for your new site.

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/site1

Next, edit this settings file.

gksu gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/site1

Change DocumentRoot /var/www to DocumentRoot /home/user/public_html.

Change <Directory /var/www/> to <Directory /home/user/public_html/>.

Save and exit the file.

Disable the default setting and make active the site1 settings

sudo a2dissite default && sudo a2ensite site1

Lastly, restart the apache.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

With this trick, you can create multiple site configuration file, each pointing to a different folder. You can then easily switch between the sites with the a2dissite and a2ensite command

Enabling .htaccess file

.htaccess file is a powerful file that can be used to control and customize a site server behavior without editing the core Apache module. By default, the .htaccess functionality is turned off and all instances of .htaccess files are completely ignored. The server will not even attempt to read .htaccess files in the filesystem.

To enable .htaccess file, open up the settings file that you have created earlier:

gksu gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/site1

Scroll down the file until you see the part “<Directory /home/user/public_html/>“. Underneath that line of code, change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

Save and exit the file.

Recommended read:
1. Install LAMP server in Ubuntu

2. How to install VLC-Shares in Ubuntu and stream audio/video to Android

A Little About RivetTracker

RivetTracker is a Bittorrent tracker written in PHP. It’s based on PHPBTTracker and includes detailed statistics, user management, browser-based configuration “wizard”, and plenty more. Since it’s PHP, RivetTracker isn’t necessarily dependent on any specific platform. This is the full list of requirements as stated by the RivetTracker website:

• A webserver, Apache is a great one.
• A recent version of PHP.
• The MySQL Database.

In short, it needs a LAMP server to operate (WAMP or MAMP server will also work). In this guide, we will be using Ubuntu 9.10, Apache 2.2.12, and PHP 5.2.10 as a reference.

Prerequisites

If you intend to run this tracker on a professionally hosted server, it should have all the necessary software installed.

If you intend to run this on your own server, you have to follow the article here to install a LAMP server in your system first before proceed.

During the installation of LAMP server, it will prompt you to create a root user, take note of the name and password you choose as we’ll need it later.

Note: Make sure you have installed the LAMP server successfully and verified that it is working before you proceed.

Installing RivetTracker

You can download the tarball from the RivetCode website and save it in your home directory. Extract the tarball (simply right-click on the tarball and select “Extract here“). You should now have a folder full of RivetTracker’s files, mostly in PHP form.

Rename the folder to “tracker” (without the quote)

Next, we are going to copy the tracker folder to your Apache web server. In your terminal:

sudo cp -R ~/tracker /var/www/

Setting Up RivetTracker

To begin the setup, open a web browser and point the URL to http://127.0.0.1/tracker/install.php.

We’ll be proceeding with the second option, letting RivetTracker create the needed database automatically.

In the field where it asks you for your admin username and password, enter the one that you have created earlier while setting up the LAMP server.

If you’re running RivetTracker on a commercial server, you may be able to use your usual login for that host. If not, you will need to contact your web host regarding MySQL access before you can proceed.

Main Configuration

If all went well in the last step (it should have clearly indicated the problem if not), you’ll get a message indicating the database was created successfully, and you’ll see the main configuration page.

Many can be left at the defaults, but there are a few that you’ll want to make sure to check:

• Make tracker hidden: Will force a login to view torrent list
• Persistent MySQL connections: Probably a good idea if you’re running this on your own server
• Upload and Admin user accounts
• Title on index.php statistics page: This will be the main header text on the front page
• Enable RSS feed: RivetTracker can send out feeds about new torrents
• Main website url
• HTTP seeding rate: In short, the amount of bandwidth to sacrifice to HTTP seeding
• HTTP seeding count: How many files to seed at a time
• Timezone

When ready, save the configuration. If the installer throws an error saying that it can’t save the config file, don’t panic. Just save the config.php file with the handy button, and manually copy it to the /var/www/tracker folder (you will need to have root permission).

Delete the install.php file

Now that you are done with the installation, you will need to remove the installer file to prevent someone from accessing it and use it to reconfigure your tracker.

sudo rm /var/www/tracker/install.php

Setting Permissions

To add new torrents and RSS feed, we need to change the permissions on the torrents and RSS directory:

sudo chmod 777 /var/www/tracker/torrents
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/tracker/rss

Note: Setting the permissions to 777 is a TEMPORARY solution. Securely setting permissions for writeable data on web servers is beyond the scope of this guide, and it is highly recommended that you look into that before deploying your tracker live.

You are good to go

Until this stage, if everything go smoothly, you should be able to access your tracker site now. Point your browser to your tracker’s address (http://127.0.0.1/tracker/)

Now’s a great time to test out those users you set up. The first has the capacity to upload but not delete, so let’s upload. Click Add Torrent to Tracker Database and you’ll be asked for a login. Enter the credentials of the uploading user and you’ll be knocked back to the main page where you can go back and get upload screen.

Note: Your tracker URL when creating torrents will be your tracker’s full address, ending with announce.php, such as http://127.0.0.1/tracker/announce.php

Once you’ve got the torrent file entered, the other options can normally be left at defaults. As long as you’ve got the permissions set on the torrents directory in your site’s root, and the torrent file has your tracker URL, you should be all set.

If you need to remove a torrent, you can do so by logging in as the administrative user and clicking Admin on the main page. You’ll find many other useful things there as well, such as additional statistics and configuration settings.

Now, you can go brag to your friends that yeah, you run your own torrent tracker, but really it’s no big deal.

GNUMP3d – The GNU Streaming MP3 / Media Server

Platform: *nix, Windows, OSX
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: Text File

So far, I think GNUMP3d is my favorite simple music streaming application. According to the website it runs on Windows as well as the UNIX type systems you’d expect from GNU. I’ve only tested it on Linux and it’s been a breeze.

To install GNUMP3d, you just download and extract the tarball from the GNUMP3d website, and run

make install

Configuration is done through a plain text file, instructions are provided on the website.

Once it’s up and running, you point a web browser to the address you’ve set up (like http://localhost:8888) and you should see a screen similar to the screenshot above. From here you can click directories or individual tracks. Each click will result in the server generating a playlist file (.m3u) which your host computer will open in whatever media player you have set up for M3U files. I tested it through VLC but the website notes that others like WinAmp and XMMS work as well.

Another handy feature found in GNUMP3d which seems to be rare with this type of software is that it allows not only streaming but plain downloads of the music files. You can download the MP3 as easily as you can stream it.

One thing I felt was missing from GNUMP3d was user access control. I’d like to be able to set permissions so that only those with the correct username and password can access my music collection. The README stated that similar functionality had been there for a previous release, but had been removed as it didn’t really do anything to improve security.It did, however, let me restrict connections based on IP address. This worked well for me as I intend to stream my home music collection from work, so I set it to only accept connections from my employer’s IP range.

Vibe Streamer

Platform: Windows (also reported to work through Wine)
Browser/Client Player: Browser
Supported formats: MP3
Configuration: Graphical

Vibe is the music streamer I’ve tested most in Windows.  Like GNUMP3d, it runs a mini webserver which gives you a browsable list of available music files. Unlike GNUMP3d, it is set up through a normal Windows graphical program. Another difference is that Vibe uses an in-browser player to play the music, instead of relying on a client-side program such as Winamp or VLC.

The one feature I really liked about Vibe was that it was very easy to set the server to only accept connections from someone with a proper username and password. It didn’t seem to use HTTPS so I can’t make any claims on how much that really improves security, but it’s a nice feature. It would at least stop someone from casually strolling on to my server and using up my bandwidth.

Icecast

Platform: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: XML file

Of the software I reviewed for this article, Icecast was by far the most difficult to set up. Configuration is done through a XML file using a lot of unfamiliar terminology. I read over the docs on the website which clarified a few of the options, but there was a lot I had to figure out on my own.

Icecast streams music like a regular radio station, with a certain selection of music being beamed out to the world. You don’t have the control over music selection you have with the other options I’ve covered here. This is good from the server side, as you only need to send out a single stream which all listeners will hear. For my purposes, I just want the stream for myself while at work, and I’d like to choose my music selection as I go, so Icecast doesn’t meet my personal needs very well. If you intend to stream music to many listeners, the Icecast style might be the best way to go.

Apache

Platform: Just about everything
Browser/Client Player: Either
Supported formats: Anything
Configuration: Apache config is a BIG topic better handled elsewhere

That’s right, the plain old Apache webserver is all you really need to stream/download your music. It’s probably not the BEST option in most circumstances, but it’ll do the trick. You simply install Apache according to the instructions for your operating system, and drop your music files in the web folder. That’s it. You won’t have any nice graphics, no playlist support, nothing fancy just a list of files that can be clicked to download or stream, depending on client/server configuration.

IMPORTANT – As with any internet-connected server, be very careful about what you place for public access. Any of the software listed here could potentially have some kind of security flaw. On top of that, it’s probably a bad idea to host copyrighted music to the whole internet. Stream at your own risk.

What other software do you use to stream music over the Web? Share with us in the comments.