CNT4603 - 2015 Summer
Assignment 2
Journals Due Tuesday, June 9, at the beginning of class.

Assignment: Create a website




Your objective is to set up a website on your Debian machine that is a clone of the Computer Science Department's current front web page (you DO NOT have to copy the whole website, it's huge.)

First, change your networking on your Debian machine from DHCP to a static network configuration. Use the IP number given to you on the sheet of paper you received last Thursday; the gateway is "192.168.26.1", the netmask is "255.255.255.0", and the broadcast address is "192.168.26.255".

Next, update your machine with apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Then install nginx on your machine (the easy way to do this is to use apt-get install nginx, but feel free to use any other method you like), but please use the Debian repository — you definitely don't need to compile this from source.

If you have errors when doing apt-get install nginx, you likely don't have a good /etc/apt/sources.list. Try this version if you are having problems.

You can test nginx locally with http://127.0.0.1 (there's a default webpage installed initially); you can help other students test theirs by using their ip number. Remember, firewalls may (or may not) exist that block access to port 80 and if such exist, you will have to remove any such blocks.

The next step is to copy over the department's webpage into the default website directory for nginx. Many tools exist for such copying; perhaps the simplest is wget, but feel free to use any one that you are comfortable with. The configuration for nginx is found in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf; your default site is in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default.

I think the easiest use of wget to copy just the main page and its constituent bits would be something like cd /usr/share/nginx/www /var/www/html && wget -nH -p -E -H -k -K http://www.cs.fsu.edu, but feel free to use whatever mechanism you prefer.

Make sure that your website is available from the top level as http://192.168.26.YOURIPNUM (nginx is actually flexible and it's possible to do this in many ways, but I recommend using the very simplest: just put it in the default website directory /usr/share/nginx/www /var/www/html, as suggested above.)

We will visit your copy of the department's website next Tuesday, so please make sure that your machine is up and that the website is available prior to class.




A journal is due for this assignment. Make sure that you document in your journal all of the steps that you went through. , following the guidelines on the class home page. Please turn in a printed copy of this assignment at the beginning of class on Tuesday, June 9.