Linux System Administration

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Chapter 6: Administering Apache

PHP Module-Specific Directives

PHP directives may be placed in PHP’s own configuration file (/etc/php4/apache2/

php.ini), or in Apache configuration files. Normally you don’t need to deal with

them unless you install a PHP extension module or want to modify where PHP

searches for libraries or tweak security settings (such as safe mode). The normal

Apache modules have configuration files with a .conf suffix, located under /etc/

apache2/mods-enabled.

Virtual Hosts

Although you could devote an Apache server to a single site, you’ll probably want to

handle more than one site. Apache calls these virtual hosts, and it has more than one

way to specify them. When a web client contacts a web server via HTTP, it sends the

destination IP address and (in HTTP 1.1, the current web protocol standard) the

name of a server at that address.

In the default Apache setup, there are no independent virtual hosts. Apache will hap-

pily serve web pages no matter how many names the server has, and all domain

names share the same configuration.

In the following examples, let’s assume we want to house each site in its own direc-

tory under /var/www/vhosts.

IP-based virtual hosts

If you have more than one IP address on your server and want to dedicate certain

addresses to certain sites, you may choose to use IP-based (or address-based) virtual

hosts:

<VirtualHost 192.168.6.1>

ServerName "www1" ...