Using USB adaptor to add 2nd nic to laptop acting as server

[settingsun]

I have a small network I'm using to learn to build a server. I have two laptops that run fedora. One is the client I use to "remotely" access the other. I use a third machine that runs Windows XP to view the website I'm building.

I want to add a second nic to the server, so I can build a second website without buying another laptop. I bought a USB to 10/100Mbps adaptor to give me a second nic to run a second ip from.

How do I tell fedora to find an use this adaptor as a second ip?

Do I have to install a second instance of Apache? ( I used yum to install the existing one)

Thank you

[SteveGYBE]

That's actually quite a lot of questions!

Let's start with the last one - No, you don't need to install another copy of Apache. In fact Yum/RPM won't let you. It is 'simply' a case of configuring Apache...

Of course, you don't actually need a second adapter for a second IP address - you can configure multiple addresses on a single adapter, known as Virttual IPs or VIPs.

And finally, you don't even need multiple IP addresses for multiple web sites - Host Headers can be set up in the web server to direct traffic for a particular URL to a specific set of content (as long as you are not using SSL). Or you can use a port other than the default, but this requires the user to specify the non-standard port, e.g. http://192.168.0.2:81 if the site is bound to port 81 rather than the default of 80 for HTTP.

But I digress - if you are running F16, click on the network icon on the Panel, select "Network Settings" from the menu (or select the System Settings applet under System Tools) and see whether it lists your new adapter and lets you configure it.

[settingsun]

Thanks for the reply. Quick note I forgot to mention - one of the ip's will use https.