Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Running Apache Under Unix

When you run Apache now, you may get the following error message:

httpd: cannot determine local hostname
Use ServerName to set it manually.

What Apache means is that you should put this line in the httpd.conf file:

ServerName <yourmachinename>

Finally, before you can expect any action, you need to set up some documents to serve. Apache’s default document directory is ... /httpd/htdocs — which you don’t want to use because you are at /usr/www/APACHE3/site.toddle — so you have to set it explicitly. Create ... /site.toddle/htdocs, and then in it create a file called 1.txt containing the immortal words “hullo world.” Then add this line to httpd.conf :

DocumentRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/site.toddle/htdocs

The complete Config file, .../site.toddle/conf/httpd.conf, now looks like this:

User webuser
Group webgroup

ServerName my586

DocumentRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/site.toddle/htdocs/

#fix 'Out of the Box' default problems--remove leading #s if necessary
#ServerRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/APACHE3/site.toddle
#ErrorLog logs/error_log
#PIDFile logs/httpd.pid
#TypesConfig conf/mime.types

When you fire up httpd, you should have a working web server. To prove it, start up a browser to access your new server, and point it at http://<yourmachinename>/.^[3]

As we know, http means use the HTTP protocol to get documents, and / on the end means go to the DocumentRoot directory you set in httpd.conf.

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