Mailing List Archive

Re-> help getting help - more specific.
>
>Yes, the documentation was originally written for people already running a
>webserver (NCSA httpd in particular) wanting to upgrade to apache. The
>documentation always needs to assume some base level, but perhaps it is a
>little too high at the moment.

I transfered from PWS on win me, as i am a web programmer not a web master.
my need for a server was fairly limited, now i need something that is more
robust, and not such a security concern. moving from a gui, to a text
based config system, where there is a Single host name to virtual hosting
capabilities - never mind load balancing, clustering etc... and i can see
many many people (the smart ones hit by the iis worms especially) making
the move to apache from a Win version.
How's that for a base level?

> >
> > what i would like to have before i started:
> >
> > 1) it would be helpful to have an archive of this apache list.
>
>Actually, this list is brand new, so it doesn't have much of an archive yet.
>But there is a little bit, plus there is a big usenet archive. They are
>both linked from here:
>http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html#archives

the archives link is a redundant link back to itself, and the link at the
bottom of the page takes me to google usenet, and is a very general server
list.
setting up a list archive should be very simple, and adding a basic search
shouldn't take too much - i'd volunteer to put that software together
myself. the archive just needs somewhere nice to live.


>To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. Most of the stuff in
>the FAQ applies to all OSes.

while having problems with my apache server serving pdf files from a
directory in my scripts path, any search i did in the doc's faq or
usegroups, pointed to a bug in solaris. now not all the messages in the
thread mentioned solaris, adding confusion to the problem. i have noticed
this before, especially to do with bugs, when trying to configure something
more specific, like a certain file type.

> > 2) i'd love to see a "deprecated" list
>
>I assume you mean you want clearer documentation on what has changed between
>versions. This is certainly a problem area, I agree. The CHANGES file is
>the only relatively complete list, and I most users aren't going to want to
>read through that.

correct, it too technical. and it's by version, not feature. i've always
belive that "changes files" were for users who are upgrading one or two
generations of a program, not newly installing the program, and trying to
figure out what par of the doc's are still relevant and which ones are
missleading. For example the AddModule in favour of loadModule, in the
newer conf file between 1.3.20 and 1.3.22, has a clearModules command right
after the loadModule, the file also has some comments about this change,
but since it's a "this new way is better but the old way still works" it's
not clearly documented. and how to take an existing new module (the
coldfusion in my case) and get it too work, took hours of time, and in the
end, just good human deduction that "clear" was not a good thing if i
wanted it to exist.
i know it's a lot of work, but the documentation needs to be version
specific. when i update my software, especially when implementing new
features, these new features don't start getting utilized till i've
documented them, and often provided clear examples. i think of it now as
the use::help if i'm going to take the time to write good software, i'll
take the required to to write the documentation - and further to that, i
have my editors run thru the doc's to see if they make sence, and provide
revisions, so it's not written to technically.
it ends up saving time in long run, because i can then get on and work on
the next version, or a new project, and not spend most of my time tech
supporting the stuff i've already done.




>The documentation on name-based virtual hosting was rewritten a few months
>ago. Is it any clearer now? Are there specific confusing things you can
>point to? (Specific is always more helpful than general.)

I think that the last time i set up my server it was with the new docs.
thanks for pointing that out though. (i'm using the doc's that came with
3.1.22) my conf file was destroyed in sept. and my backup was out of date
(lesson learned - again), so i had to rebuild, i still like the way the old
one worked, but for some reason can't get it back the way it was.
my biggest problem was when i cut and past a chunk from the doc's and
edited my paths, the server wouldn't even start, it took me a while just to
implement the very very basic 2 URL's, one the default and one virtual.

still today, my config file has the root path redundant see below, i'm sure
it wasn't like that with my first attempt:

ServerName www.justken.net

DocumentRoot "C:/wwwroot"

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

<Directory "C:/wwwroot">
Options All MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

then later on...

<IfModule mod_alias.c>

Alias /samples/ "D:/WWW/samples/" # which work just fine at
justken.net/samples

<Directory "D:/WWW/samples/">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

and my virtual config...

NameVirtualHost *


<VirtualHost *> #notice this one is redundant, or else i get nothing at all.
ServerAdmin justken@rogers.com
ServerName justken.net
DocumentRoot C:/wwwroot

ErrorLog C:/wwwroot/cgi-bin/logs/main_error.log #and why do i have to
put my logs into the cgi-bin for them to be written,
LogLevel warn #i
tried them elsewhere, including the default.

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin justken@rogers.com
ServerName admin.youthcircle.net
DocumentRoot D:/WWW/CYCs/Admin

ErrorLog D:/WWW/CYCs/Admin/Logs/admn_error.log
LogLevel error

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin justken@rogers.com
ServerName toronto.youthcircle.net
DocumentRoot D:/WWW/CYCs/Toronto

ErrorLog D:/WWW/CYCs/toronto/logs/tor_error.log
LogLevel error

</VirtualHost>

#end

i'd also love to see some examples of placing cgi-bin for each of my named
servers as follows.

/user1/cgi-bin/ www.user1.net/cgi-bin #client rwx
/user1/public/ www.user1.net #client rw
/root/cgi-bin www.user1.net/cgi #client x (shared cgi-bin)

i think that this question is back on the list just this morning? it get's
my vote for being in the faq!



ken easson
justken.net
justken@rogers.com
justken web programming and technical support.


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Re: Re-> help getting help - more specific. [ In reply to ]
>> The documentation on name-based virtual hosting was rewritten a few months
>> ago. Is it any clearer now? Are there specific confusing things you can
>> point to? (Specific is always more helpful than general.)

May I jump in with a quick suggestion?

I'm rather new to Web servers, in general, and I'm not sure if this is a
web-server issue, or specific to Apache, but it was a question that stumped
me (and pretty much everyone I asked that didn't have a deep understanding
of web hosting, either).

The question was how do I run two physical servers (with VirtualHosts)
behind one IP address? I had assumed that it was a simple means of setting
up the VirtualHost configurations to see and direct requests to the other
server. Alas, after about a weeks worth of research and asking several
people who all offered suggestions that they THOUGHT would work, it became
apparent that there is no real way to do it via the VirtualHost.

So, my suggestion would be to add a comment that says something to the
effect that VirtualHosts can only exist on the machine running Apache...for
those of us that just assumed that would work. ;o)

-Darrel


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RE: Re-> help getting help - more specific. [ In reply to ]
> From: justken [mailto:justken@rogers.com]
> >Actually, this list is brand new, so it doesn't have much of an
> archive yet.
> >But there is a little bit, plus there is a big usenet archive. They are
> >both linked from here:
> >http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html#archives
>
> the archives link is a redundant link back to itself, and the link at the
> bottom of the page takes me to google usenet, and is a very
> general server
> list.

Hmmm... Please take a more careful look there. Under the "Archives" heading
at the bottom of the page, it links to archives at AIMS, ApacheLabs, and the
raw mbox archives. If you want to contribute another set of archives, that
would be welcome too.

In addition, if you search google under the comp.infosystems.www.servers
hierarchy (make sure you select "search only in these groups", you will find
that most of the posts relate to Apache.

>
> still today, my config file has the root path redundant see
> below, i'm sure
> it wasn't like that with my first attempt:

Take a look at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/vhosts/name-based.html in the
paragraph just above "Compatibility with Older Browsers". It explains how
this works. Your are not the only one to be confused by this, but I'm not
sure how to explain it any more clearly.

> i'd also love to see some examples of placing cgi-bin for each of
> my named
> servers as follows.
>
> /user1/cgi-bin/ www.user1.net/cgi-bin #client rwx
> /user1/public/ www.user1.net #client rw
> /root/cgi-bin www.user1.net/cgi #client x (shared cgi-bin)
>

I'm not sure exactly what you want here, but my best guess is

ScriptAlias /cgi/ /root/cgi-bin/

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName www.user1.net
DocumentRoot /user1/public/
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /user1/cgi-bin/
</VirtualHost>

The ScriptAlias outside the virtualhost section will apply to all
virtualhosts, while the one inside will apply only to www.user1.net.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Joshua.


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RE: Re-> help getting help - more specific. [ In reply to ]
> From: Darrel Austin [mailto:daustin@visi.com]


> The question was how do I run two physical servers (with VirtualHosts)
> behind one IP address? I had assumed that it was a simple means of setting
> up the VirtualHost configurations to see and direct requests to the other
> server. Alas, after about a weeks worth of research and asking several
> people who all offered suggestions that they THOUGHT would work, it became
> apparent that there is no real way to do it via the VirtualHost.

This is not really a web server issue so much as a general internet issue.
You can't, in general, have two machines with the same IP address, whether
they are web servers or not. The only exception is complicated
load-balancing setups using fancy routers.

Having said that, it can actually be done by turning Apache into a fancy
router. I don't recommend this for a novice, but here goes:

NameVirtualHost *

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName host1.example.com
DocumentRoot /usr/local/apache/htdocs/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName host2.example.com
ProxyPass / http://otherhost.example.com/
ProxyPassReverse / http://otherhost.example.com/
</VirtualHost>

Note that you need to have mod_proxy compiled into the server, and you need
to be careful about how links on the backend otherhost.example.com server
are constructed. For more info, see the mod_proxy documentation.

Now, I'm not sure that an example like this really should be in the docs.
If you don't really know what you are doing, you are just going to get
yourself into trouble using this.

Joshua.


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Re: Re-> help getting help - more specific. [ In reply to ]
Thanks Josh,

Yea, I figured it was more of an internet issue. What was interesting is how
many people couldn't figure this one out either. I had people offer all
sorts of interesting suggestions.

> Now, I'm not sure that an example like this really should be in the docs.
> If you don't really know what you are doing, you are just going to get
> yourself into trouble using this.

Agreed.

Thanks for the tip, though. I may try getting myself into trouble this
week... ;)

-Darrel

on 12/31/01 1:02 PM, Joshua Slive at joshua@slive.ca wrote:

>
>> From: Darrel Austin [mailto:daustin@visi.com]
>
>
>> The question was how do I run two physical servers (with VirtualHosts)
>> behind one IP address? I had assumed that it was a simple means of setting
>> up the VirtualHost configurations to see and direct requests to the other
>> server. Alas, after about a weeks worth of research and asking several
>> people who all offered suggestions that they THOUGHT would work, it became
>> apparent that there is no real way to do it via the VirtualHost.
>
> This is not really a web server issue so much as a general internet issue.
> You can't, in general, have two machines with the same IP address, whether
> they are web servers or not. The only exception is complicated
> load-balancing setups using fancy routers.
>
> Having said that, it can actually be done by turning Apache into a fancy
> router. I don't recommend this for a novice, but here goes:
>
> NameVirtualHost *
>
> <VirtualHost *>
> ServerName host1.example.com
> DocumentRoot /usr/local/apache/htdocs/
> </VirtualHost>
>
> <VirtualHost *>
> ServerName host2.example.com
> ProxyPass / http://otherhost.example.com/
> ProxyPassReverse / http://otherhost.example.com/
> </VirtualHost>
>
> Note that you need to have mod_proxy compiled into the server, and you need
> to be careful about how links on the backend otherhost.example.com server
> are constructed. For more info, see the mod_proxy documentation.
>
> Now, I'm not sure that an example like this really should be in the docs.
> If you don't really know what you are doing, you are just going to get
> yourself into trouble using this.
>
> Joshua.
>
>
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>


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