This may have an obvious answer but managing a server is new to me so I want to make sure. I am wanting to install Virtualmin on a local development setup for testing. I was going to use Webmin but I like the idea of having each site being separated by account. I have seen strong emphasis on using a FQDN during setup. My question is since this will be a local environment only, can I simply use a fictitious .tld such as fakedomain.com? I am wanting to be sure this can work since the name will not resolve. On the same note can each site also use a fictitious.tld? I do have domains but all are in my use. This server will only reach the outside world to gather updates.
if you have no plans on linking it with a domain name and you only need to load up your website via IP address, a fake FQDN is enough. Be warned that it won't be easy to load up the other accounts/website on the same local installation
To be honest, you can be better off installing a LAMP combo
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So I won't be as simple as pointing to 192.168.0.X:10000 and having different login credentials for each site as it is with WHM/Cpanel on a server?
having different login credentials is not a problem, on one IP. I usually use servers in a data centre, therfore i never had the need of putting it local. But i am pretty sure, this should work, even you will have to figure out, how to access different websites (perhaps if you set them accordingly in your bind9, but i am not a DNS specialist :-)
Yeah, I started thinking about actually viewing the sites. This is my first local setup. I assume I need to configure bind with the fictitious domains to resolve them locally. I'll try to start looking into it. Hopefully it's not to difficult as I am not well versed in setting up DNS. I am thinking something like example.lan.
So it is for learning purpose only? I am not sure, where you come from, but there are a lot of internet hosting providers, who give you a virtual root server for almost free. Hetzner in germany charges something around US$9 or so for 2 vcores, 2 GB RAm, 50 GB SSD and 5 tb traffic, which is real cool for poking around and learning. They support Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu and SUSE. I think almost anywhere you would find such an offer. :-)
You know, that is exactly what I was gonna do but someone on another forum mentioned using an old pc and building my own and it sounded fun so I did. Now I just have to figure out a way around this domain name issue so I can access the sites individually. I have found a couple of sources for configuring a dns server based on fake name but I am having a little trouble understanding it completely and am weary to start tinkering with it until I get a handle on it a bit more.