The purpose of this guide is to install the APACHE server. The APACHE web server has been choosen because it is the most used at the moment. In addition, it is free and its source code is available on the site: http://www.apache.org.

Warning!! the OVH system already has the configuration. You can find too the standard scripts of compilation on our server:

• ftp://ftp.ovh.net/made-in-ovh/patch

The version on which we are going to work in this guide is the 1.3.4. You can find it on the site http://www.apache.org
You must download the file apache1.3.4.tar.gz


Before unzipping the downloaded file, you must create a temporary directory with the command:



Next, you must decompress the file with the following commmand:



The file is zipped and tar. You must decompress the sources into the temporary directory, which was previously created.


The files allowing the Apache set up are as follows:
install and all the files contained in the htdocs/manual directory

Thanks to these files, we have been able to know that the minimun space to install Apache is 12 MB and that the installation needs a C ANSI compiler.


To compile the Apache server, you must type the following commands:



PREFIX/sbin/apachectl start, which allows to start the HTTPD daemon and then to check if the compilation has been successful.
PREFIX corresponds to the setup directory too.


Even if 2 software exist to configure the APACHE server, here we will give the configuration methods of APACHE by modification of text files contained in the conf directory.

The configuration files are in the /etc/httpd/conf directory

There are 3 important files in the configuration:

• access.conf: contains the instructions allowing to manage the access rights on the server
• srm.conf: contains the instructions managing the names and the types reachable to the connected users from their web browser.
• http.conf: contains the own directives for the functioning of the server.

The following command allows to start the server:


The following command allows to restart the server:



The following command allows to stop the server:





In the following parts, it is necessary to have previously created a user. If it is not the case, you must create it with the command: adduser

e.g a toto user


To change the user name, who will launch the web server (here toto), you must edit the http.conf file. Find the line where User is written and replace nobody by toto.



To change the virtual port on which the web server goes lock on, you must edit too the http.conf file. Find the line where Port is written and replace the value which is after the port number that you want.
Warning: some ports are reserved (FTP, Telnet, ...)
The configuration thus is as follows:



Warning!! If you change the virtual port, when you connect on the toto web site, you must specify the new port


In this part, we want to change the configuration when we search the url http://my-server/toto, APACHE search the tutu.html file in the WWW directory of the toto user.

To do so, we must edit the srm.conf file. Find the line where "DirectoryIndex" is written and replace the following by the file to load.

Name of file(s) to display by default, when no file is given in the URL

If you want to specify many files, you must put them one after the other



It is possible to change the error messages by editing the srm.conf file and modify the content following the keyword ErrorDocument?
For Example:



OR




There are two ways to test a server:

The first one is very classic, try to display a page with a web browser.

The second one is to test a connection on the web server by the telnet tool. By telnet, we can directly write the request to receive the response in text mode.
Here is an example of use with the telnet command: we can recover the presentation page of a web site by typing telnet vodka 8080 then get /index.html HTTP/1.0 followed by double ENTER.

The server response is in two parts:

First, the header which indicates if the question has been understood by sending a return value (here 200 OK), if the resource has been found, the resource type, etc ...



The Content-Length and Content-Type fields correspond to the size and document type.


In order the server to use the least of process at the start, you must edit the httpd.conf file and research the string "startservers". We find after this string the number 5, replace this number by 1 to launch only one process.



VirtualHost allows to configure many virtual machines on the same server. The server must be setup to accept many Ip addresses. In general, we configure the linux kernel of server. The configuration can be found in the http.conf file and has the following kind:




Definition of KeepAlive:
If this variable is put on ON in the http.conf file, it authorizes the web browser to order the connection to keep alive. If this variable is put on OFF, it is desactivated.
Then we find after this variable other ones linked to KeepAlive such as MaxKeepAliveRequests, which gives the connections number being able to keep alive at the same time or KeepAliveTimeout which gives the maximum delay in second in order the connections kept alive to wait for without action.

Definition of FollowSymLinks:
The FollowSymLinks variable is in the access.conf file. If this variable is in the OptionsIndexes field, the exploitation of symbolic links or shortcuts will be authorized.

Definition of FancyIndexing:
If this variable is put on ON in the srm.conf file, the files icons will be displayed with the directories. With the OFF value, the directories are only displayed in HTML.

We must find a serie of icons names (keyword AddIcon), which allows to link the files types to icons when the FancyIndexing mode is on ON. That allows to redefine the icons related to files when directories display.


The purpose is to restrict the access rights of a web site directory. this is done in two steps:

• Indicate that the directory has specific rights in the access.conf file

The protection of a page by a password is done in a simple way by adding the directive shown below in the access.conf file



/directory/page.html is the protected page

AuthName is the label which is displayed in the protected window
AuthType is in general with the Basic value
AuthUserFile is the file containing the user names, who has the right to access to the page with their associated password
require is a directive, which can take the valid-user value

• Create an user and a pasword

The creation of a password is possible with htpasswd programm, which takes the following syntax:

htpasswd [-c] passwordfile username

with the -c option, the file is created; without the -c option, the file is completed by the new entry.
passwordfile is the file name containing the passwords.
username is the user name