Tutorial

Shengdong Zhao
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~sszhao
(some slides are reused/modified from Neil Ernsts apache tutorial)

History
Based on Rob McCools NCSA web server (left to start Netscape 1994) 1st release (Apache 0.7.x) on April 1995 based on NSCA 1.3 server Patches created for extensions and bug-fixes (Apache = A-patchy Server) Today 52.65% of all web server (July 07, www.netcraft.com) 2 streams: 1.3.x (very popular) & 2.x (current)

Apache Architecture

http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~aeehassa/cs746/as1/apache1.htm

Apache Architecture
Select module handler at install Modules hook into phases in the Core processing cycle via API Apache talks to clients use HTTP protocol
Client request: GET /index.html Apache maps request to a handler or file Authenticate Return content with headers Modules can hook in at any point during the protocol

Headers
Check out the LiveHTTPHeaders extension for Firefox: view the entire transaction. Headers usually tell the client the status of the request, the mime-type of the content returned, the length, etc.
Allows the client to decide what to do.

GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.yahoo.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4 Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/ png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Cookie:

HTTP/1.x 200 OK Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:47:16 GMT P3P: policyref="http://p3p.yahoo.com/w3c/p3p.xml", CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV TAI PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi TELo OTPi OUR DELi SAMi OTRi UNRi PUBi IND PHY ONL UNI PUR FIN COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL HEA PRE GOV" Cache-Control: private Vary: User-Agent Set-Cookie: FPCM=deleted; expires=Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:47:15 GMT; path=/ Set-Cookie: Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Encoding: gzip

Modules
The power of Apache is its modules
mod_ssl: Secure internet transactions mod_rewrite: redirect agents elsewhere mod_perl: PERL language interface mod_log_config: logging mod_include: filter other modules

Apache on CDF
We run instances of the Apache server daemon (httpd) using our own config files (no install!) version 2.0.52 1 course web page student guide Apache and follow the instructions 2 download the tar file apache.tar.gz 3 save it and untar it to a suitable folder, e.g. ~/309/ (tar xvzf apache.tar.gz) 4 cd ~/309/apache/bin; ./start.sh <portnum> This starts the server; stop it using ./stop.sh 5 verify: ps u <user> | grep httpd 6 view: lynx http://localhost:<portnum>/

Directory Structure
Bin: the start and stop programs Conf: the config file for your server instances Cgi-bin: put executable scripts here Logs: error_log is any errors the server gets (404, 403), and access_log all accesses the server deals with htdocs: html files E.g. see examples in each directory and play around

Configure Apache
Shouldnt need to change much in the /conf directory (mainly httpd.309.conf) Can set your DocumentRoot in httpd.conf:
DocumentRoot /where/you/want/to/put/your/docs

Can set your web admin e-mails

ServerAdmin you@your.address

Demo

Work at home
1. Install and config Cygwin http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/workathome/print .php3?id=76 2. Double click Cygwin icon to start 3. Type startx to start x window 4. At the popup xterm, type ssh -X youraccount@cdf.utoronto.ca to login to your account

FAQs
Can I run this all at home, on Windows/Mac?
Sure. Apache even runs on Xbox. However, we mark assignments on CDF

How do I view my server on the internet?

http://<XXXwolf>.cdf.toronto.edu:<portnum> http://<localmachine>.cdf.toronto.edu:<portnum> in the labs

My start/stop arent working?

Always start/stop directly in apache/bin to make sure paths work properly

Other references
The student guide on the course site httpd.apache.org (e.g.)
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/htaccess.html http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html#basi c

Refcards.com Apache 1.3 reference card for printing (also other useful cards) http://refcards.com/docs/forda/apache/apacherefcard-a4.pdf

.htaccess files
Use .htaccess files
These are read per-directory (affect subs) by the server and can contain many things
Security restrictions Redirects URL rewrites

.htaccess files: sample format

order allow, deny deny from 123.45.6.7 deny from 012.34.5 Allow from all AuthUserFile / user/local/you/safedir/.htpasswd AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName EnterPassword AuthType Basic Require user wsabstract