How to show students the work of HTTP, DHCP, DNS servers?

Question

Apache HTTP Server

There is a class with 12 computers. There are no administrator rights. Worth Ubuntu. Put VirtualBox there. I am a student myself, they asked me to show how I managed to install apache2 and dnsmasq at home.

Computers are weak. There is an option to put Debian on 2 VMs and connect them to the network. What else is possible?

Students generally know almost nothing.

Answer 1

If you do not have administrator rights, you can get. In the bootloader, add the init=/bin/bash parameter to the kernel. The root
console will start, there you can either change the root password or create a user with access via sudo.
Well, then show on working servers and clients. And how it works can be shown using wireshark. Will show where what requests go and what transfers. Convenient and visual.

Answer 2

In theory, you need to show the entire stack of technologies at once. Let them put another VNC client for everyone, you will broadcast a read-only picture from virtual machines.
We connect three virtual machines into a network (I’m just not sure that it will be possible to assemble a virtual network on different real machines without admin rights everywhere, but one may not pull it).
The first is the “server” (Apache)
The second is the “router” (dhcpd, bind).
The third is the “client” (naked linux).
At the first, we raise a mega-site on Apache.
On the second, for example, we hang Wireshark and show traffic in real time. There you can select sessions at different levels, twist the backlight of sessions again.
On the third, respectively, the browser.
From the first, we need to show Apache's access.log in realtime.
From the second, the picture from the Wireshark window is enough
. From the third, you can open the firebug in the browser and show how the pages are loaded.
If anything, we replace the first and second virtual machines with one.

Answer 3

Http can be easily demonstrated with
sudo apt-get install apache2 Regarding DCHP
, the situation is complicated, since it is not known what it is :(
got it, I don't know about your situation)

Answer 4

There is a close-up TCP\IP book: www.soslan.ru/tcp/. Console commands are described there in theory. You can get examples from there.

Answer 5

It can be deployed on each training PC KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) with 2 minimal virtual machines (RAM 128MB, HDD 1Gb), which will have DNS + DHCP and Apache / Nginx, respectively.
It is obvious that the machines must be prepared in advance and identical on all PCs in the classroom. Give them names according to the numbers of training PCs, for example, test-netXX and test-webXX. These two machines should be on a small non-class network, something like 10.0.0.0/29.
Because students already know the theory, then the practice can be started by turning on both machines, one of which has static IP, and the other has DHCP. We turned it on, looked that one is available (pings), and the other is not (or received a fake IP from the 169.xxx range). Then we go to test-net-XX, edit the configs responsible for DHCP, start the services. We restart the network on test-web-XX - we look at what we got IP. Well, and so on in the same spirit we reach the web server.
You did not write how familiar the students are with the console and ssh, this can be a big difficulty, or you will have to manage all the machines yourself from your
computer / laptop. Might have to share

I am a student myself, they asked me to show how I managed to install apache2 and dnsmasq at home.

If I were you, I would clarify the objectives of the workshop, otherwise the result could be very upsetting. Talk to the person who asked you to show what they want to see/understand/be able to do at the end of the workshop.

Answer 6

If I had to explain to anyone how DNS, WEB and HTTP work, I would use Cisco Packet Tracer, everything is elementary there, different requests (packets) go back and forth in multi-colored envelopes, it’s impossible to misunderstand. And there is nothing to scare students with consoles, all desire can be beaten off. If interested, write, I will build a topology.