Chris Tyler - Fedora Linux

General Options

Enter the name of the virtual host (this information is only for your reference, so you can be as descriptive as you want), the Document Root directory that will store documents for this host, and the webmaster email address (if different from the default).

If you choose a Document Root that is not within /var/www/html and have SELinux active, you will need to change the security context of that directory (see Lab 8.2, "Using SELinux").

Page Options

When Apache receives a request for a directory (such as http://www.fedorabook.com/example/ ), it will search that directory for files that can serve as an index to the contents of that directory. Traditionally, the index is named index.html , but you may wish to use other names, such as index.php , home.html , or index.htm . Use the Directory Page Search List area of this tab to configure all of the possible names for the index file, in your desired order of precedence.

Apache is preconfigured with standard pages that are displayed when an error occurs. To override any of these pages and present a custom error message, highlight the page in the Error pages list and click Edit. A dialog box will appear; change the error message behavior from Default to File and enter the location of the page you wish to use (or select URL and specify the local URL of the web page). You can customize the footer displayed at the bottom of default error pages using the Default Error Page Footer control.

Logging

Apache maintains two logs per virtual host: a transfer log , which records what was sent to clients, and an error log , which records any problems encountered. By default, all virtual hosts will share one pair of logs, but to analyze statistics separately for each virtual host, you'll need to specify separate logfiles for each. To do this, change the "Log to file" name for the Transfer Log from logs/access_log to a name that includes an indication of the virtual hostname, such as logs/ fedorabook_ access_log . Do the same for the Error log, changing logs/error_log to logs/ fedorabook_ error_log . Alternately, you can consolidate logs from several servers using syslog by selecting the Use System Log option and entering the hostname or IP address of the syslog server.

The default logfile format does not contain referrer information, so you can't tell where your visitors are coming from or how they're navigating your site. To add this information, select the checkbox "Use custom logging facilities" and set the "Custom log string" to combined .

Performance

This tab should actually be named Permission, since it controls what is permitted in web directories. Click on the Edit button in the Default directory options section to edit the options for the virtual host's Document Root directory; available permission options include ExecCGI (run scripts), FollowSymLinks (follow symbolic links to files), Includes (process server-side include directives in files), IncludesNOEXEC (process server-side includes, except scripts), Indexes (use index files such as index.html when a directory is requested), MultiViews (enable content negotiation such as automatic language or image-type selection), and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch (follow symbolic links if the link and the target are owned by the same user).

To set the permissions for a particular directory, click the Add button in the lower part of the window (or, if the directory is already listed, click the Edit button). Enter the directory name in the Directory field at the bottom of the window and set the Options checkboxes for the options you wish to enable in this directory. By default, all remote computers (hosts) will have access to the content in this directory; the Allow and Deny list options can be used to permit (or deny) access only from certain hosts. The hosts can be identified by hostname ( fedorabook.com ), partial domain name ( .com ), IP address ( 192.168.100.1 ), or IP address and netmask or bit count ( 192.168.100.0/255.255.255.0 , or the equivalent 192.168.100.0/24 ).

To enable the use of .htaccess files, select the checkbox labeled "Let .htaccess override directory options."

There is also a tab for SSLused for secure, encrypted web servingand a tab for Environment, which is used to pass information to web scripts, but the options on those tabs are not used for basic web serving.

Once the virtual host is configured, click OK to return to the main HTTP configuration window ( Figure 7-17 ).

The Server and Performance Tuning tabs in the main HTTP configuration window do not normally require adjustment.

After configuring Apache, click OK to save your configuration (a confirmation dialog may appear).

The main Apache configuration information is stored in /etc/httpd/conf/ httpd.conf . Additional configuration information is stored in the directory /etc/httpd/conf.d/ . Per-module configuration files are automatically installed and removed along with Apache modules and web applications such as SquirrelMail.

httpd.conf is a regular text file and can be edited with any standard text editor. As mentioned earlier, I strongly recommended that you make a backup copy of this file before each change:

# cp /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.backup- 1

httpd.conf contains a number of directives , each of which consists of a name and one or more values, listed on a single line with a space after the name and each of the values. The directive names are not case-sensitive, but some of the values are. Values must be quoted if they contain spaces.

These directives are all equivalent:

ServerRoot /etc/httpd

ServerRoot "/etc/httpd"

ServerRoot '/etc/httpd'

SERVERROOT /etc/httpd/

serverroot /etc/httpd

To add a comment line, place a pound sign at the start of the line:

# Note: /etc/httpd is the standard Fedora server root.

Comments must be on a line by themselves.

Directives are global unless they are placed in a container , which limits the scope to which the directive applies. For example, the container causes the contained directives to be applied only to a specific directory (and its subdirectories); here, the directives apply only to the contents of /var/www/html :

Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride None

Allow from all

Order allow,deny

The ServerRoot directive sets the directory that contains all files related to the Apache serverincluding configuration files, logs, modules, and runtime informationexcept the actual content being served. By default, all relative paths specified in httpd.conf are relative to this directory. The default is /etc/httpd :

ServerRoot "/etc/httpd"

The DocumentRoot directive sets the directory for files being served. Fedora's default is /var/www/html :

ServerRoot "/var/www/html"

Changing DocumentRoot will require you to change the SELinux context of the new document root directory.

The directive named ServerAdministrator specifies an email address that can be used to reach the person responsible for running the web server. This address appears on certain error pages. This should be a valid address so that your web visitors can contact you if necessary, but since it can be harvested by web spiders, it is a good idea to use a disposable email address and change it regularly. The default value is root@localhost and should always be changed: