Re: qustions about Apache setup

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Schweizer <schweiz@example.com> writes:

    Jim> Hi all, Thanks Steve for the imagemap info. What are 'skinny
    Jim> boys' anyway?

Alex Bevan is a blues/folk singer from Northeastern Ohio.  His
"signature song" (actually made the national charts) was "Skinny,"
about the "skinny little boy from Cleveland Ohio / who's gonna chase
your women and drink your beer" and cause a fair amount of other
mayhem, but mostly drink: "run outta Wild Turkey? Jack Daniels' is
fine / but keep your gin & tonic and your Ripple wine".

I grabbed "Skinny Boy Associates" as a name for my (non-existent)
consulting firm.  Just in case it ever actually gets off the
ground....

    >> Do other CGI scripts work?  If not, your ScriptAlias (or
    >> equivalent) is wrong.

    Jim> Arrgh. I enabled Server Side Includes and they don't work
    Jim> either.

Symptoms?  If your document does *nothing* unusual at SPML directives
(ie, treats them as comments), then you need to check:
  o Do you have the "AddType text/html .shtml" and "AddHandler
    server-parsed .shtml" directives uncommented in srm.conf?  (I
    assume that's what you meant by enabled, but just checking....)
  o Do you have "Options Includes ..." in access.conf (or in an 
    .htaccess for the relevant directory)?  The Apache docs are very
    unclear about this....  Why these things need to be enabled in
    both srm.conf and access.conf I don't know.

If your server chokes stone-cold dead on SPML directives, and refuses
to give anything after them, it's because Apache HTTPd is extremely
sensitive to the syntax of those directives.  It insists that most
attribute values be enclosed in double quotes.  Any typos in the "-->"
closing brace cause the server to choke there.  (The error log shows a
message of "premature EOF in parsed file".)

I haven't tried .shtml with the NCSA 1.3 HTTPd (and probably won't, I
don't see any reason not to go to Apache or NCSA 1.5.2 in the near
future), but NCSA HTTPd 1.5.2 seems to have better error checking.  At 
least, when an Apache-specific directive was encountered, it told me
that it found an error while parsing the file.  (Most of the stuff
that Apache says to use, eg, the virtual attribute for #include, is
non-portable; of course "include file=" works for both.)  My test file 
lives at "http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/sparse.shtml".

    Jim> In /usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/srm.conf:

    Jim> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin

Well, mine has a trailing slash; I don't remember whether that was
important or not, but it might be.  This is different from
DocumentRoot and so on.  I believe that the trailing slash was
essential for the /icons/ alias.  I suspect that the server is not
very bright about matching these.

Are the relevant directories (all the way up the tree) and files
world-readable (httpd usually accesses them as "nobody")?

    Jim> In http.conf I have a question about ServerName...

    Jim> I've tried setting it to localhost and 127.0.0.1 and wormhole
    Jim> none has any effect. What DNS name am I supposed to use?

Don't use one; leave that directive commented out.  What happens is
that by default httpd calls uname(2) (directly or indirectly) to get
the domainname.  That's why when you call up "www.somedomain.net"
you'll often see a message about "ralph.somedomain.net" or
"31.41.59.26" instead of "www.somedomain.net".  The ServerName
directive allows you to change this, in case you have several aliases
(the same box is jim's-box.dom.or.jp and ftp.dom.or.jp and
www.dom.or.jp, for example, a common situation since it allows you to
"hot-swap" hosts later, without telling everybody in the world to move
their links, if eg the ftp/www box gets overloaded and you want to
separate the functions).  uname(2) will probably not give the right
answer for this situation (you don't want to see "ftp.*.*.*" instaed
of "www.*.*.*").  However, if it is not a valid DNS name, it will
screw up the connection negotiations.

I append a unified context diff (without context ;) of my *.conf files
against the distribution versions.  (These are my Apache .conf's, of
course.)  Note that to use the server-info and server-status handlers,
you must add the appropriate modules; they're not in the default.
I've fixed the permissions, you *can* check them out.  (The URLs are
an exercise for the reader.)  The reason for the funky ServerRoot and
DocumentRoot locations is that I want my WWW and FTP servers in their
own partitions (I've had people dump 10MB files in my FTP /incoming,
despite the fact that it's write-only :-( ).  This arrangement also
aids upgrading to new servers, you can run them both in parallel and
their config files don't trip on each other :-)

Regards,
Steve

--- /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1/conf/access.conf-dist Thu Jul  4 02:18:11 1996
+++ /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1/conf/access.conf	    Fri Sep 27 15:12:55 1996
@@ -15 +15 @@
-<Directory /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs>
+<Directory /WWW/htdocs>
@@ -23 +23 @@
-Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
+Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
@@ -41 +41 @@
-<Directory /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin>
+<Directory /WWW/cgi-bin>
@@ -49,2 +49,2 @@
-#<Location /status>
-#SetHandler server-status
+<Location /status>
+SetHandler server-status
@@ -52,4 +52,4 @@
-#order deny,allow
-#deny from all
-#allow from .nowhere.com
-#</Location>
+order deny,allow
+deny from all
+allow from turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp localhost
+</Location>
@@ -58,0 +59,8 @@
+
+<Location /config>
+SetHandler server-info
+
+order deny,allow
+deny from all
+allow from turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp localhost
+</Location>

--- /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1/conf/httpd.conf-dist Sat Jun  8 05:56:47 1996
+++ /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1/conf/httpd.conf	   Wed Sep 25 18:31:57 1996
@@ -19 +19 @@
-Port 80
+Port 8080
@@ -36 +36 @@
-ServerAdmin you@example.com
+ServerAdmin turnbull@example.com
@@ -41 +41 @@
-ServerRoot /usr/local/etc/httpd
+ServerRoot /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1

--- /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1/conf/srm.conf-dist Thu Jun 13 11:04:43 1996
+++ /WWW/Servers/apache_1.1.1/conf/srm.conf	 Wed Sep 25 18:36:43 1996
@@ -15 +15 @@
-DocumentRoot /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs
+DocumentRoot /WWW/htdocs
@@ -134 +134 @@
-#Alias /icons/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/icons/
+Alias /icons/ /WWW/icons/
@@ -139 +139 @@
-#ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/
+ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /WWW/cgi-bin/
@@ -157,2 +157,2 @@
-#AddType text/html .shtml
-#AddHandler server-parsed .shtml
+AddType text/html .shtml
+AddHandler server-parsed .shtml
@@ -165 +165 @@
-#AddHandler imap-file map
+AddHandler imap-file map

-- 
                           Stephen John Turnbull
University of Tsukuba                                        Yaseppochi-Gumi
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com
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