Howto Setup a Lighttpd Chroot Jail Web Server under Debian Linux

Security, speed, compliance, and flexibility--all of these describe LightTPD which is rapidly redefining efficiency of a webserver; as it is designed and optimized for high performance environments.

A chroot on Linux or Unix OS is an operation that changes the root
directory. It affects only the current process and its children. If
your default Document Root is /home/lighttpd normal user can access
files in /etc, /sbin or /bin directory. This allows an attacker to
install programs / backdoor via your web server in /tmp. Almost
all-cracking web based attacks/attempts requires a shell access -
/bin/sh or /bin/bash and compiler collection etc.

This article describes how to setup a lighttpd in chrooted jail under Debian and Ubuntu Linux. The article also deals with related issues such as sendmail and perl+mysql installation under Lighttpd.