Mono allows you to run applications written in .NET programming language on Linux machines.

Step 1: Install the YUM repository by grabbing the file mono.repo from the mono website and placing in /etc/yum.repos.d/ folder.

--- Update 7/22/2011 ---

The above file is no longer available. Here is the contents of the mono.repo file that I grabbed previously when it was available. Just take the contents and create a file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ called mono.repo with the following contents.

 [mono]
name=Mono for rhel-4-i386 (stable)
baseurl=http://go-mono.com/download-stable/rhel-4-i386/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Step 2: Install Mono by executing this command. yum install xsp

The above command should also install these required components

Installing:
xsp                     noarch     1.9.1-0.novell   mono              210 k
Installing for dependencies:
mono-core               i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono               17 M
mono-data               i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              1.8 M
mono-data-sqlite        i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              169 k
mono-nunit              i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              115 k
mono-web                i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              3.0 M
mono-winforms           i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              3.9 M

Congratulations you have installed mono and can now execute programs written in .NET on your machine. However I had you install XSP as it is a small webserver that can run a website written in .NET without having to integrate into your existing web application such as apache. If you want to integrate into apache follow the instructions at this Mono website.

Setting up XSP

Step 1: Create a folder that will be the root folder for your website. Example: /home/monoweb/web

Step2: Setup the startup script /etc/rc.d/init.d/xsp for XSP that will host your website. Change permissions to allow execute chmod +x /etc/rc.d/init.d/xsp  . Below you will find the example startup script I found on the web that has worked for me.

Step 3: Setup /etc/xsp.conf that the startup script uses to set the port and folder the website exists under.  Below is the example contents.

Step 4: Setup XSP to automatically start on reboots. chkconfig xsp on

Step 5: You are now ready to host your website. Simply publish your website files to the root folder you defined and issue this command service xsp start

Contents of /etc/xsp.conf

Note: you should change the --port definition to the port you want to use. Make sure nothing else is using the same port you define.

--port 8082 --root /home/monoweb/web/

Contents of /etc/rc.d/init.d/xsp

#!/bin/sh
#
# Startup script for xsp server
#
# chkconfig: 3 84 16
# description: xsp is a asp.net server
#
ARGS=`cat /etc/xsp.conf | grep -v \# `

. /etc/init.d/functions

start() {
echo -n $"Starting xsp: "
# Check PID/existence
pid=""
if [ -f /var/run/xsp.pid ] ; then
         read pid < /var/run/xsp.pid
         if [ -n "$pid" ]; then
   rm /var/run/xsp.pid
  else
   echo -n $"xsp is already running."
   failure
   echo
   return 1
         fi
fi

/usr/bin/xsp2 --nonstop $ARGS > /dev/null &
RETVAL=$?
if [ $RETVAL != 0 ]; then
  failure
  echo
  return $RETVAL
  fi
PID=$!
echo $PID > /var/run/xsp.pid
success
echo
return 0
}

stop() {
echo -n $"Shutting down xsp: "

if [ ! -f /var/run/xsp.pid ]; then
  echo -n $"xsp not running"
  failure
  echo
  return 1
fi

kill -15 `cat /var/run/xsp.pid`
RETVAL=$?

if [ $RETVAL = 0 ]; then
  rm /var/run/xsp.pid
  success
  echo
  return 0
else
  failure
  echo
  return $RETVAL
fi
}

restart() {
stop
start
}

case "$1" in
  start)
   start
;;
  stop)
   stop
;;
  restart)
   restart
;;
  *)
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
exit 1
esac

exit $?