December 2002
Intermediate to advanced
588 pages
25h 57m
English
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How Apache Works
Apache is a program that runs under a suitable multitasking operating system. In the examples in this book, the operating systems are Unix and Windows 95/98/2000/Me/NT/..., which we call Win32. There are many others: flavors of Unix, IBM’s OS/2, and Novell Netware. Mac OS X has a FreeBSD foundation and ships with Apache.
The Apache binary is called httpd under Unix and apache.exe under Win32 and normally runs in the background.[5] Each copy of httpd/apache that is started has its attention directed at a web site , which is, for our purposes, a directory. Regardless of operating system, a site directory typically contains four subdirectories:
- conf
Contains the configuration file(s), of which httpd.conf is the most important. It is referred to throughout this book as the Config file. It specifies the URLs that will be served.
- htdocs
Contains the HTML files to be served up to the site’s clients. This directory and those below it, the web space, are accessible to anyone on the Web and therefore pose a severe security risk if used for anything other than public data.
- logs
Contains the log data, both of accesses and errors.
- cgi-bin
Contains the CGI scripts. These are programs or shell scripts written by or for the webmaster that can be executed by Apache on behalf of its clients. It is most important, for security reasons, that this directory not be in the web space — that is, in .../htdocs or below.
In its idling state, Apache does nothing but listen to the ...