Presented byLonnye Bower

Fardin KhanChris Orona

APACHE WEB SERVER

Introduction and Installation of Apache

Server

Note: Images courtesy of apache.org

Introduction to Apache

• Apache is a web server package that works under Linux as well as under other operating systems

• The name Apache comes from the concept of extensive patching of existing code

• The primary advantage of Apache is that it is generally free or available at modest costs

Installing Apache

Installing Apache From a CD-ROM

• If your CD-ROM has Apache and you want to use RPM to install the package, issue this command– rpm –i apache_1_3_4.rpm(substitute the full name of the Apache

package)

Installing Apache From a Download

• Place the downloaded files in a location that will be dedicated to the Apache files, such as /usr/apache

• Uncompress the files using either gzip or tar and compress

• You must edit the configuration file– You can find more information about

this in the Readme file

Installing Apache… (con’t)

• Uncomment all the Modules in the configuration file except– cern_meta_module– msql_auth_module– dld_module

• Choose either db_auth_module or dbm_auth_module; they should not be used together

Installing Apache… (con’t)

• Create the configuration file for Linux by issuing the command– Configure

• Compile Apache by issuing the make command– The most common error message

encountered concerns the socket.h library, most likely because TCP/IP is not installed

Installing Apache… (con’t)

• The result of the compilation will be a binary file called httpd

• Copy this file into /bin or /usr/bin, where it will reside in the path

Setting Up the Website

Setting Up the Website

• Create the home directory for the website, we will use /usr/www/ganesan

• Create 3 subdirectories under the site directory– conf– htdocs– logs

Setting Up the Website (con’t)

• You will find a subdirectory called conf under the directory where you installed Apache– Copy 3 files (srm.conf-didst, access.conf-dist, http.conf-dist) from this directory into /usr/www/ganesan/conf

– If you cannot find the 3 files, use the find command to find them

Setting Up the Website (con’t)

• Rename the 3 files you just copied to drop the “-dist” portion of the name

• Edit the httpd.conf file to specify – the port number on which your web

server responds– the user running the httpd daemon,

etc…• Specify the server name

– ServerName ganesan.com

Setting Up the Website (con’t)

• Add a line that specifies the root directory for your website– DocumentRoot /usr/www/ganesan/htdocs

• Edit the srm.conf file to set up the web home directory and any special internal command usage

• Edit the access.conf file to set a basic set of access permissions

Setting Up the Website (con’t)

• In the htdocs directory create an HTML file for the server to read when it starts– This can be any HTML file– The filename should be default.html

• Start the httpd daemon– httpd –f /usr/www/ganesan/conf

Setting Up the Website (con’t)

• Test the web server by starting a browser and specify the URL http://127.0.0.1/

• If the system is working properly, you will see a screen with a list of files in the htdocs directory

Server Configuration

Server Configuration

• Make sure the ServerType directive is set to “standalone”

• Check the Port device to make sure it is set to the TCP/IP port to which your Apache server listens

• Set the User directive to either the user ID (UID) or the user name used for all web visitors

Server Configuration (con’t)

• Set the Group directive to either the group ID (GID) or the group name assigned to all web users

• Modify the ServerAdmin directive to include the e-mail address of the administrator

• Set the ServerRoot directive to the absolute path to the directory where all Apache resource and configuration files are stored– /usr/apache/conf or /etc/httpd

Server Configuration (con’t)

• Set the ServerName directive to the fully qualified domain name of your server

Starting and Stopping Apache

Starting and Stopping Apache

• If you are running Apache as a standalone server, you need to start and stop Apache manually– Start with httpd –d rootdir –f configs

– To stop Apache use ps to detect the httpd daemon’s PID and use the kill command to terminate the process

A Note on Starting and Stopping Apache

• Later versions of Apache include a script that does the start and stop tasks for you

Virtual Hosting

Virtual Hosts

• A virtual host is a web server that resides on one domain but acts as if it was on another. For example, suppose you control ganesan.com and cis454.com. Instead of setting up 2 servers, you can set up a single machine that serves both domains.

• Virtual hosting saves on machinery and allows for a lot of flexibility in setting up web servers

Setting Up Virtual Hosting

• If your network uses a name server for DNS, modify it so that the domain name points to your web server for each domain you’ll host

• Use the ifconfig command to set up the IP address for each domain on your server– ifconfig eth0:1 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Setting Up Virtual Hosting (con’t)

• Add the route to the network configuration using the route command– route add –host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dev eth0:1

• Edit the Apache httpd.conf file to set up virtual hosting– <VirtualHost www.cis454.com>DocumentRoot /usr/www/cis454/htdocsTransferLog /usr/www/cis454/logs/accessErrorLog /usr/www/cis454/logs/errors</VirtualHost>

Setting Up Virtual Hosting (con’t)

• The previous step defines the virtual host for cis454.com and specifies its DocumentRoot, since each virtual host will have different web directories

• If more than one virtual host is defined, the entries are to be repeated for each

A Final Note

• There are many more configuration options possible with Apache, but they are usually used for commercial sites that require authentication or special handling characteristics

Key Terms

• Apache• conf• Server Name• Virtual Hosting• ifconfig

Apache Resources

• For more information on Apache go to– www.apache.org – www.apacheweek.com – dev.apache.org

Thank You and Good Luck!If you have any questions regarding Apache and/or any part of this presentation, please feel free to email:

Lonnye Bower at Lonnye@aol.comChris Orona at corona@calstatela.

eduFardin Khan at Fardin24@aol.com