one man army wrote:
> Hello All-
>
> I have a strong background in sfwr development, but almost no unix
> experience. I have inherited a Linux server, onto which I and a couple
> cohorts will be putting a custom server app we are building.
>
> My associate, a long time UNIX admin, spent a bit of time setting
> things up. He sent me voluminous notes on a lot of detail (surprise).
>
> I think the OS is Red Hat Enterprise 2 - the binaries appear to be
> about 2 years old. How can you tell for sure?

If you mean Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, one way would be to hit
Ctl-Alt-PF[1-6]. This will give you a message of the day (not the one in
/etc/motd) that will tell you what you have, followed by the

login:

prompt. Mine, running a current RHEL 3 ES, says:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 3 (Taroon Update 6)
Kernel 2.4.21-37.ELsmp on an i686
>
> A young programmer learning ruby is building some pages using rails.
> He and I did not know where a safe place to put the new app would be, so
> I picked what I thought to be an ok choice. A new folder in /home. The
> app has an entry in the httpd.conf which points an alias to that
> directory. Is that a reasonable choice?

I never heard of ruby or rails, but you can put the source anywhere you want
to do your developing in. I suggest /home/theUserName/playpen (pick a better
name than "playpen"). Do your developping and testing there.

Do not make a folder in /home. In the /home directory should be only
directories for users, and a few other system files like

drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jan 24 2003 .
drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 4096 Dec 5 01:07 ..
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Dec 23 2004 aquota.group
-rw------- 1 root root 7168 Dec 1 08:48 aquota.user
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Mar 2 2004 lost+found

You might wish to look at the File System Hierarchy Standard for guidance.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
>
> Lastly, I hear stories about PHP vulnerabilities. Any notions about
> ruby on rails security?
>
I never heard of PHP either.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 09:05:00 up 8 days, 19:35, 4 users, load average: 4.42, 4.29, 4.20