Hello,

I am planning to create a server to host an online community.

Do you recommend a 32 bit version or 64?

And which guides should I follow, the LAMP guide for sure, but then for the email, to be able to send from the server, and to get notifications in the server.

Thank you.

Generally 32 is recommended if you are going to be having a smaller server - it becomes advisable to use 64 bit if you are going to be hosting a server 4 GB or above. So it depends on how big your community is going to be, I suppose.

As for guides, I would start with the getting started stuff in the Library here: http://library.linode.com/getting-started
Those guides will walk you through setting up everything needed to run an efficient server.

Hope this helps, and welcome to Linode.

Ghan_04 pointed to the guides for all your needs about installation etc.

As for 32bit or 64bit, I asked the same question way back once, and the conclusion is that if you have to ask this question, 32bit is the right one for you.

I don't remember much of the details, but I do remember lower overheads and no performance gains as far as I know of/ will use.

My 2 cents.

Thank you for the reply, but as usual, I expect it to grow... So I might go for the 64 bits...

As for the guide I already read it, but it does not show me what I need. In a community, usually people send emails to each other, so what will I need?

It's your server so I can only recommend. Know that I've been through the path though, and I expect all my sites to grow.

However, from experience my advice is to worry about growing your server WHEN you get your million-th member, not before ..

You have a lot to worry about at this stage than to worry about 32bit vs 64bit...

I guess you know that you cannot change from 32 to 64 bits on the fly. In order to use more than 4 GB of RAM you need 64 bits...

Maybe not to a single Linode on the fly, but it's certainly easy enough to spin up a separate Linode (or even just a new distribution on your current Linode depending on disk space) as a 64-bit distribution if you reach that point and move over your local setup. At that scale you'll likely be continuing to evolve the separation between front end, database and other services anyway. And in fact, horizontal scaling of such features can put off actually needing any single Linode that large for quite some time. Easily re-creating machines for new distributions or configurations is one of the benefits of the VPS environment.

In the meantime, using 64-bit on the smaller Linode configurations is just going to waste a lot of memory - which is a limited resource - without providing any practical gains, so I'm not really sure why it would ever be preferred.

-- David

Thank you David, now it is clear. I will go for 32 bits.

And about the other question, what do I need to install besides the LAMP?

A postfix is enough? But how will the users send mails to each other?

If you need to receive email as well as send then you can either
1) Outsource to something like google apps or
2) Use citadel http://library.linode.com/email/citadel
3) Use dovecot/postfix/mysql http://library.linode.com/email/postfix ... 0.04-lucid

If you only need to send email, postfix is fine.

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Thank you for the clear info.

The order you gave to each option is by complexity of the setup or by recommendation?

Random order, they all have merits.

Outsourcing means you don't have to deal with spam filters etc but google apps costs when you need more than 50 accounts.

Citadel is an all in one package and may provide more than you need and will require a larger linode (a 1gb-2gb should suffice)

Postfix will be more complicated to set up since it's made of lots of components but you can pick and choose what you want.

Personally I outsource.

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How to ask for help
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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

Imagine another scenario:

I have the domain registered with a shared hosting --> I can control there the emails easily. But I want to use linode for my hosting. Can i just point to the linode server for the hosting purposes and keep the email in the shared hosting?

Do you think that can be done?

Thank you again

Yes just point your MX records at the shared hosting

_________________
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

The limit is now 10 for free google apps accounts.