PROTOR Knowledge Base

PROTOR Redhat: Installation and setup of Apache Web Server

Author:	Don Davies
Date:	2-Apr-2003

Installation

In order to run the Apache web server on a system you will firstly need to install the suitable RPM using a command of the form:

rpm --install --nodeps --replacefiles --replacepkgs


              apache-1.3.23-11.i386.rpm

Installation of the RPM creates the binary

 /usr/sbin/httpd

and the setup and configuration directory

 /etc/httpd

the default access directories

 /var/www

and the service startup,stop and restart script

 /etc/init.d/httpd

Configuration

The main configuration of apache is controlled by the file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. The most probable options which will need changing are likely to be :

 *DocumentRoot

The root directory for all files to be accessed is defined. By default this is set to /var/www/html

 *Alias

A number of aliases may be created ( relative to DocumentRoot) these are typically cgi-bin and icons. A further alias for images is often useful.

 *Directory

A number of <Directory> </Directory> blocks are included to define access information associated with individual directories. For each directory block a number of options may be defined. Options which often need adding are :


     ExecCGI         to enable execution of cgi scripts especially
                     for directory /var/www/cgi-bin

     FollowSymLinks   to follow symbolic links. Again needed for
                      /var/www/cgi-bin if CGI scripts are links to
                      pl files.

Startup

You can startup the server using the command

service httpd start

User Files

A simple way of accessing a users set of files is to create a directory within the users directory such as :


      /home/protor/website

and then to create a link to this directory from within the document root.


      cd /var/www/html
      ln -s /home/protor/website protor

You may then access any user files by starting a web browser and pointing to the URL:


           http://localhost/protor

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