Fedora Server + Virtualmin

[Madchatthew]

I want to start out and say that, no, I am not Linux flavor jumping around. I was curious with how Fedora would be as a server. There is a community server that is built for use, so I downloaded that. My impression of this setup is a good one.

I installed Fedora Server in a virtual machine on Arch Linux, Arc Linux has been my daily driver for quite some time now. I believe it has been over a year, but maybe I am just not good at keeping track of time. Anyway, I installed Fedora Server on a virtual machine. Now Virtualmin doesn’t have Fedora listed on it’s Grade A Supported Systems list, but it is on their Grade B Supported Systems list. So I thought, well why not. I really like Fedora so let’s try it.

With a fresh install of Fedora Server installed, I downloaded script and after a few attempts with which switches to use, Virtualmin was up an running in no time. I went through the Virtualmin setup process via the web page and viola! I was then able to use Virtualmin on Fedora Server and it looks and feels exactly the same. It runs quick on Fedora Server as well.

So why would I do this you ask? Let me tell you! Because I wanted to see if it would even work. Then i thought well if it did work, then maybe that might even be a more stable way of running a web server without having to reinstall the whole operating system everytime the OS is upgraded. Which was the whole reason I moved to Arch Linux. Which by the way is running fantastically well. The email software had a major breaking update, but that didn’t have anything to do with Arch Linux.

My thinking was that if I ever have to build a new server, I just may use Fedora. You aren’t using the newest rolling updates like in Arch Linux, so your upgrades in between versions would be longer. Speaking of upgrades, I have a couple of Fedora Servers running on two different machines using virtual machine.

I performed the upgrades on each of them. One I was on the machine itself, and the other I remoted into. Of course the upgrade process is different. You need to upgrade your system using sudo dnf update and then letting the system update. To update to the lates version of the OS you have to use sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=XX with “XX” being the latest version. Then you run sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot and this is where the magic happens. Now you get disconnected in the terminal, but with the Virtual Machine Manager you can open that and see what is happening. I watched the upgrade go through it’s process, which was just showing so many files out of so many files being updated but then when it was done, Fedora Server rebooted itself and I was able to remote back in and verify that it was indeed upgraded.

I went into Virtualmin and did some refreshing and Virtualmin also verified that the latest Fedora Server was running. The websites were back up that I just threw together to test and everything was running right as rain.

So you could say that I am impressed with how Fedora Server is holding up. One of the downsides, is that when you do upgrade the OS to the newest version, your sites are down for that amount of time. Unlike with Arch Linux your sites are only down for however long it takes to reboot. So there are some trade offs there.

With Fedora Server you get a little longer in between upgrades, so the chances of things breaking are less. I do have to say that so far with Arch Linux and the rolling releases, I have not yet had anything break from doing upgrades.