# Need advice for Webserver/Intranet



## givemesam (Aug 29, 2012)

Hi all.

Pardon my nubieness.

I am looking for a solution that can act as a very lightweight and bulletproof webserver. BUT this webserver only needs to do a few things.

Task 1 - Host a Website (its more of an intranet site)
     2 - Host a Lan (provide routing for lan clients)
     3 - Redirect all web requests/dns requests outside of our domain/walled garden to resolve to our walled garden splash page
     4 - Server has the ability to connect to the internet
     5 - Entire system should be able to run in offline mode
     6 - wan side FTP server for admin to conduct file transfers 
     7 - Ability to capture credit card transactions offline, and batch upload them when wan side connectivity becomes available.

Is FreeBSD going to be an easy solution to use to achieve this? Is there another build of BSD or another OS that I should be looking at?

I appreciate any ideas, and please be clear as I am a noob to FreeBSD, and am eager to learn.

Sam


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## SirDice (Aug 29, 2012)

Lets see

1) Any webserver can do that, www/apache22, www/lighttpd, www/nginx.

2) That's not the job of a webserver.

3) Can be done using DNS or clever routing with PF or both.

4) Has nothing to do with the webserver but with your network.

5) Offline? As in, not connected to the internet? Again, that's your network.

6) Several options, ftp/proftpd for example.

7) That depends on your application.


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## givemesam (Aug 30, 2012)

Hi SirDice!

Thanks for the info.

So am i correct to infer that a FreeBSD build can not host the server role of DHCP Server? (similar to the server roles and snap ins that windows server can do?)

Thanks!


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## wblock@ (Aug 30, 2012)

Yes, of course FreeBSD can be a DHCP server.  Many common uses are covered in the Handbook.


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## mamalos (Sep 4, 2012)

givemesam,

be wary that since your web server is going to be handling credit-car transactions, I'd advise you to use an OS that you know *very well* and write your application code with *great care* as far as security is concerned.

All OS's are good for accomplishing the tasks you're asking, and all can be very secure IF YOU KNOW HOW TO SECURE THEM. Apart from your server security, though, you must take *great care* of your application code, since this will be your primary source of vulnerabilities and not the OS or webserver-software of your choice.

Good luck with your configuration.


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## mwatkins (Sep 4, 2012)

A FreeBSD server or servers could be configured to do what you need done, with the appropriate system and application software choices. Certainly items 1 through 6 are easy enough to address although you might want to revise your plans a little.

For example do you really want a FTP server running for "admin" upload access; perhaps what you really want is the ssh daemon configured to allow remote access from authorized folks in a secure manner and those folks can use scp (secure copy) over ssh to transfer files. 

The larger question you should answer is what application(s) will you use to provide the credit card capture / transmission functionality? Is this a commercial or open source package? If so is it available in Ports? Or is it custom software that has been or will be written?


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