Apache configuration

Hi guys, I am a Linux newbie, and I have 4 questions ..
Which of you guru's can help me?


Information:
I run Linux Mandrake 8.1 and I have installed ALL modules etc.
The complete install!

Problem: #1
I want to have complete acces over my files from a Windows computer in my LAN.
I have Webmin, and Samba, but I can't get it to work ...

Problem: #2
I run apache because I am testing my beta website.
It's using alot of PHP and MySQL, and there is one thing I can't manage to fix.
Uploading a file. I don't have the permission to do that.
I know the script is good .. used it before on my windowsPC...

I get this message:


Problem: #3
I have always used phpMyAdmin to manage my databases .
I can't get this program to work anymore ... Do I need to installer something adittional ???
help.......

Problem: #4
I use Webmin to manage most configs.
When I want to edit or set the SENDMAIL ... it gives the error sendmail.cf cannot be found .. I can't find anything about this topic .. What do I need to do?


Thanks in advance ya'll

Hi! Welcome to the Linux community

as usual, i first suggest you buy a book and / or linux magazines. how long did it take you to learn windows and how many people could you ask at this time?

Problem: #1
Webmin is a afaik total security f´up. If you want to connect to the internet, deinstall it!
for samba: samba comes with its own, easy-to-use gui (web-based like webmin): SWAT. edit /etc/inetd.conf, look for a line similar to "# swat swat - ....... - /usr/local/samba/bin/swat". remove the comment-sign ("#"), restart inetd ("killall -HUP inetd" on the console) and then access it with "http://<your-ip>:901"
read on. in a later problem, i´ll discuss the problems with complete access to all your linux files...

Problem: #2
Yes, this is where i add on to the last sentence.
Linux has a different permissions scheme than windows. on windows 9x/me you don´t have file permissions at all. anyone can edit/modify/delete all files, his own, others´ and system files.
on windows NT/2k/XP, you have a (quite good and detailed) user/group permission scheme. you can´t delete other users´ data and you can´t delete system files. (unless you are the administrator)
the latter is similar in linux. your files and folders have permissions (although they work a little different from windows...).
you are nearly right: it is your web-server that is not allowed to write files anywhere
short explanation:
each file and folder has three groups of permissions: user-, group- and world-permissions. these can be a mixture of "read", "write", "execute". these are written in a row, eg:
/home/user/myfile could have "rwxrwxr-x", that is: first three are user. he can read, modify and execute the file (any file can be executable in unix, they don´t need stoopid names like ".com" or ".exe")
middle three are the group (i´ll leave group ownership out for now) and the last three are "world" which is anyone not being the user or in the file´s group. they can only read and execute. no writing.
your solution:
the webserver usually runs as wwwrun/nogroup or similar. so you create the folder it should be allowed to write to as aministrator:
login as root.
cd /usr/local/www/ (or where ever your docroot is)
mkdir upload
chown wwwrun upload (change owner of "upload" to "wwwrun")

then you have a folder where your server IS allowed to write to since it belongs to it

Problem: #3
phpMyAdmin is cool. i use it too.
if it is installed, first look where. is it /usr/local/www/phpMyAdmin or does it have a different name. something like "rpm -q -l phpmyadmin" or "find /usr -name phpMyAdmin*" could give a hint. your installation program should support listing the files in rpms too.
you only need a web server with php support. php support must be enabled for the extension of the phpMyAdmin files. they come in two variations: one always ends in .php3, one always .php . but mandrake should have taken care of this for you...

Problem: #4
Sorry, can´t help you much here. Sendmail is very complicated and i never dealt with mandrake before...

Long post, eh? hope this helps and thus was worth the effort!