Summary

In this chapter, you learned about the Apache web server, its history and widespread usage today, how to install and configure Apache, and how to manage and interpret Apache’s log files. The chapter discussed ways in which Apache can be installed on Linux and UNIX systems, stepped through a manual compile and install process of Apache from its source code, looked at commonly used options in the Apache httpd.conf configuration file, and went through how a new installation of Apache can be tested using static HTML pages as well as Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts. The chapter discussed CGI security issues and how Apache’s suexec facility addresses these issues. The chapter also discussed password protection of web pages through Apache basic authentication. The chapter also stepped through the compile, install, and test process of the popular PHP web application language, which is commonly integrated with Apache in the widely used LAMP web application framework. The chapter concluded with a description of Apache’s log files, how to interpret the information found in them, and how to manage the disk space requirements of these potentially very large files.