Jexus Series: How to Install Jexus Web Server 5.3.1 on Ubuntu 13.04

This is a series of posts regarding the free Linux web server called Jexus.

What is Jexus?

Jexus Web Server is a free web server for Linux (it is free, but not open source). It is powered by Mono and aims to provide best support for ASP.NET applications (while it also provides excellent PHP support out of the box).

Its homepage is at http://www.linuxdot.net/ (in Simplified Chinese).

Install Steps

1. Install Mono runtime

   sudo apt-get install mono-complete
   

   As Jexus requires Mono runtime, in this step we install latest stable Mono runtime (2.10.*) via apt-get. Mono 3.0.* is recommended if you know how to get it compiled and installed.

2. Download and unpack Jexus

   wget http://www.linuxdot.net/down/jexus-5.3.1.tar.gz
   tar -zxvf jexus-5.3.1.tar.gz
   

   Jexus binary package is downloaded from its official site, and extracted to a folder named “jexus-5.3.1” after this step.

3. Create default web site

   sudo gedit /var/www/default/index.html
   

   When gedit is opened, type in some text, such as “Hello World from Jexus”. Save and close the file.

   /var/www/default is the default web site path for Jexus. In this step we create a test page using gedit. You might use any other Linux text editor to create this test page.

4. Install and launch Jexus

   cd jexus-5.3.1
   sudo ./install
   cd /usr/jexus
   sudo ./jws start
   

   Here we put Jexus binary to /usr/jexus folder, grant the jws shell script file execution permission, and then use it to register Jexus modules in Mono GAC and launch the HTTP service. If you want to install Jexus to another location, please change the commands accordingly.

Now if we open Firefox and navigate to http://localhost, the test page we created is displayed correctly,

In the next post in this series, we will see how to upgrade from an older Jexus release to a new release. Stay tuned.

If you are interested in Jexus, but do not understand Chinese well, you can post your questions to https://github.com/jexuswebserver/jexus-contrib/issues.

Updated:

Below is the alternative way in step 3 to create the test page using vi,)

1. sudo vi /var/www/default/index.html
2. Press i on keyboard to enter edit mode.
3. Type “Hello World from Jexus” and press Esc on keyboard to exit edit mode.
4. Type :wq and press Enter on keyboard to exit vi.