Apache

Apache is the most popular webserver in todays online world. The 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey reported that 63% of Websites are using Apache as their Web Server. PCQLinux includes Apache.

Apache gets automatically installed at the time of PCQLinux 8.0 installation for all options. To install Apache afterwards, mount the PCQLinux 8.0 CD 1 and issue the following command at the terminal:

#rpm -ivh httpd-2.0.40-11.i386.rpm

Basic Apache configuration with Webmin

Webmin — our standard configuration tool, itself depends on the Apache Web server. Although it may sound a little contradictory, we will configure Apache (the Web server) using Webmin which runs on top of it! Don’t worry, it works. First of all, start your Web server (Apache), by issuing the following command at the terminal:

#apachectl start

This starts Apache with all the default settings. You may have already done this step, if you have started Webmin before you reached here. What we will do here is fine tune Apache. Now Open your browser and go to the Webmin interface. Browse over to Servers à Apache WebServer. Scroll down to the bottom of the form where you will see that Apache has configured a default Virtual Server (under the heading Virtual Servers) which will work on any IP address on the machine and on any port. So, this is not a secure location. 

Now create a new Virtual Host by entering the IP address, port and document root (the directory where the web site’s HTML files will be stored) in the form provided further below on this page. 

After filling all the information, click the Create button and your Webserver will be ready to serve the pages.

You can set up multiple virtual hosts on the same machine, each responding to a different IP address or to the same IP address, but to different port numbers from here. To the outside world, each will appear to be a separate website. 

Configuring Apache with apacheconf apacheconf is another very neat tool to manage Apache. To start apacheconf just click on start –> server settings –> HTTP Server, or if you want you can also start it through command line by issuing the command

#apacheconf

It will start a nice front end by which you can do all the configurations of Apache. To create a new virtual host, select the Virtual Hosts tab. Now click on the Add button. It will show a form, from where you can enter all the details like Virtual Host Name, IP address, Document Root Directory, etc. after doing this, click the ok button and your WebServer will be up and running. 

In order to test whether your website is up and running properly, open a browser and point it to the IP address of the machine on which you have just finished the configuration. If you are using a browser on the same machine, point it to http://127.0.0.1 or to http://localhost. And the port you specified for the virtual host.

The index.html file lying at the directory you specified as the document root will be loaded up.

Anindya Roy