Chapter 21: Setting Up a Web Server

Overview

In This Chapter

• Introduction to Web servers

• Quick starting the Apache Web server

• Configuring the Apache Web server

• Starting and stopping the server

• Monitoring server activities

More than 60 percent of all Web sites today are powered by the open source Apache Web Server Project (compared to about 30 percent for Microsoft Web servers). In late 2006, Netcraft ( www.netcraft.com ) received responses from more than 60 million sites that were running Apache. As registration of Internet domain names continues to grow at an average rate of more than 1 million a month, Apache is getting the lion's share of new Web sites being launched.

The Web has also been a boon to organizations seeking an inexpensive means to publish and distribute information. Using the Fedora Core distribution that comes with this book or RHEL, you can launch your own Web site using software available from the Apache project. Combine your own domain name , Internet connection, and Fedora or RHEL to create your own presence on the World Wide Web.

This chapter shows you how to install and configure the Apache Web server. Each of the server's configuration files is described and explained in detail. You learn about various options for starting and stopping the server, as well as how to monitor the activity of a Web server. Related security concerns and practices are addressed throughout the chapter in the descriptions and examples, as well as in a special Web server security section ("Protecting Web servers with certificates and encryption") in Chapter 14.

Note 

The current version of Fedora comes with Apache version 2.0. Apache 2.0 includes support for a new Apache application programming interface, UNIX threading (for multiprocessing), Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), and multiple protocols. A handful of new modules have also been added. With version 2.0, the package names apache and apache-manual changed to httpd and httpd-manual. Also, an http-suexec package has been added, to allow a more secure way to execute scripts in Apache.