Previous part is here.

Configuring Web Server

I chose nginx as web server because after research it looks like it is gaining a lot of popularity while second contender Apache2 is losing popularity.

First step is to ensure that your web server is working correctly. Because http port is opened in Amazon router and in your virtual PC you should be able to access it from outside from your browser. Just type http://<you static IP address> in your browser and press Enter. You should see standard nginx web page.

Next step is to make sure that nginx will not serve anything that is not specifically added. Edit file /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and replace it content with following:

server {
	listen 80 default_server;
	listen [::]:80 default_server;
	return   444;
}

Some time ago I needed simple tutorial site. Initially I was thinking about static page hosting and I started research. But during research I found AWS Lightsail service. It cost $3.5 per month and offers 1 vCPU, 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB of SSD space and 1 TB of data transfer. It is about that the same as my current hosting offers but in case of Amazon it is your own virtual PC, and you can do whatever you like there. It looks attractive, but there is one catch. It is Linux. I had some experience with Linux, but it was far from extensive. On another side I really like challenges, so I decided to try it.

But before

Let me talk about my first experience with Ubuntu. But before that I had to state that my previous experience with Linux was somewhat limited. I did play a bit with Linux at around 2003. I also have couple of OpenWRT routers that are Linux based. I was able to do quite a lot with these routers.

Anyway, back to Ubuntu. We had quite old server that was running Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS and I have to install exactly the same version and necessary software. At the beginning I couldn’t find 16.04.5, but I was able to find 16.04.1 and I decided to install it and then later upgrade it to 16.04.5.

Firstly, I accidently install regular Ubuntu with desktop etc.