Home Server

You'll need a piece of software to use for the server. I use MacHTTP on some of my older servers, and it does well. For the connection, you'll need to forward any ports you're serving on to the G4, and start up the software. You should be able to get to your server from your external IP address then.

Oh, since you've got a cable modem, your IP probably changes once every few weeks. Consider using a service like dyndns.org to cope with it.

-BDub

I suppose if you are using mac os x, you could use apples built in apache & ftp server. those can be accessed from the system prefs. It's also ideal if you want to dabble with PHP and MYSQL

If I'm not mistaken, OS 9 does have some serving capabilities built in. Search Mac Help for "Personal Web Sharing" for instructions on how to enable it.

As for port issues, your ISP may or may not allow you to serve from port 80, an alternative would be port 8080. Your router will need to foreward port 80 or 8080 for HTTP to get through.

And as noted before, your IP is probably not static. http://www.dyndns.org has a great free service to foreward a steady URL to your ever changing IP, like http://ltong.homeip.net/

You may also want to check to see if your router supports Dynamic DNS Updating automatically. With mine I simply entered my DynDNS.org member info into the router so it automatically updates DynDNS.org with my new IP whenever a change occours.

I strongly recommend against using OS 9 for any sort of server systems. I have plenty of experience using OS 9-based servers and I never want to go back to it again. The personal web sharing service in OS 9 is extremely unstable, as is the AFP over IP service.

OS X or linux are both vastly superior operating systems for server use. Setting up web and file sharing in OS X is a breeze, too.

I have to disagree with you. I have been running a FirstClass server on MacOS 9 for over a year now and have not had any problems with it. It serves my webpages and my BBS.

I do agree about the personal websharing service, it is very limited and not worth the trouble.

OS 9 has worked pretty good for me too. My OS 9-powered Carracho/Hotline (inet exposed) and AFP-over-IP/NetPresenz(ftp)/Timbuktu (local services) server has been up 24/7/365 since May 1999. Well, it does lock up occasionally due to Carrasho acting up. That changes depending on the peculiarities of the current Carracho server version. The current setup goes for weeks with zero problems.

Interestingly, AFP-IP filesharing (via ShareWay IP Personal Bgnd) is surprisingly robust, the whole damn machine will appear locked up but I'll still be able to connect via AFP.

On the whole, if I were starting from scratch I'd for sure set up a server with X, but OS 9 really can still get the job done.

dan k

ps: sig contains server's urls