Apache HTTP server configuration – Core Part

For the Apache HTTP configuration, usually there are 3 parts. The core part, the container part and the extension part. In this blog, we are going to talk about the core part briefly.

The core part is for the Apache main modules, it applies for the whole Apache configuration.  There are some common configuration items as below:

ServerName: specify the default global server name for the http server.  You may use FQDN or ip for this section.

Sample config: ServerName www.example.com:80         #specify my host is www.example.com

Listen: specify the listening port for the http server. By default, you may define it as 80 but it can be any other port.

Sample config: Listen 80 #specify the http server is listen on port 80

ServerRoot: it is used to define the server’s root. Usually it is defined when the source files are configured by --prefix=[location].  If it is a binary installation. Usually use /etc/apache2.

Sample:  ServerRoot "/usr/local/apache2" #specify my root path is /usr/local/apache2

DocumentRoot: it is used to define the default html root location. It could be overwritten in the virtual host settings.

Sample: DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs" #specify my root path is /usr/local/apache2

ServerAdmin: used to specify an WebAdmin’s email address . when there is a problem, you may send the email to report the issue.

Sample: ServerAdmin rafa.xu.au@gmail.com

ScriptAlias and Alias: as used to map the url to a specify directory in the machine. ScriptAlias will let the server recoginse the files in the directory as cgi scripts while Alias is only as normal directory.

Sample:

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/usr/local/apache2/cgi-bin/"

    Alias /alias/ "/var/tmp/alias/"

User and Group: used to define the ownership for subprocesses. For security reason’s the user and group should be dedicated for httpd processes as an non-login account.

User apache

Group apache

Loadmodule: the command is used to load the modules dynamically.

Sample: LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so     #it will load mime_module into Apache.

ErrorDocument:   specify the error code with friendly page or scripts

Sample: ErrorDocument 404 /404.html #make a specify 404 page for the user.