My friend does alot of corporate web development and I guess he has the full package on Linode servers. Recently he gave me a shell account to upload all my files for my personal website. How can I get this site going (as far as domain name and dns.) i.e. After setting up the site, how can I get my domain pointed to his name servers? This question has probably been asked and answered before I just can't find it. Also don't wish to bother my friend too much on this as he is real busy. I think he did give me sudo privileges to where I can update htaccess. I just don't want to interfere with his clients dev sites.

Well if your friend gave you access to his linode manager account or a sub account then you can add DNS records there. If not then it's probably easier using your registrars name servers and pointing A records to your friend's linode's ip. Either way name servers are set with your domain registrar

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How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
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4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
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It's probably a good idea to ask your friend. There's probably thousands of ways to set up a web hosting environment, and that will be much, much safer than guessing how it might be set up.

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Thanks for the quick replies. OBS, thats probably how I'm needing to do it. I'm used to those free web hosts and can just point my domain name to their name servers (i.e. ns1.webhostingsite.com) The only thing with these free host are lack of ssh and limited ways I can use their servers. (i.e. no irc chat, no forums, things like that.) On my buddies linode server. I can run chatroom and host phpbb system. I'm just researching how I can point my domain name to a the linode name server and route that to my home directory. (if thats even possible.) I just don't want to go mucking around with his /var/www directory. How would website request to a home directory. Here is how I have my tree setup currenttly. /home/myusername/www/index.php Would it be possible to have this as a working web directory with .htaccess? Thanks again for the quick replays and help with this research. My only priority is not knocking the whole setup offline and disrupting service to the buddies clients.

Pointing a domain to a website is done using DNS that's the name server bit, pointing a website to a directory is done on the server itself using the web server software ask your friend to do that as hoopycat stated the server could be setup in many different ways any advise we give would be guessing and could break stuff.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue