Chapter 21: Setting Up (Web server logs) a Web Server Overview
Chapter 21: Setting Up a Web Server Overview The World Wide Web is the fastest growing segment of the Internet, and HTTP traffic makes up over 70 percent of the total network bandwidth. Electronic commerce has provided a new virtual storefront for businesses trying to stay on the cutting edge of technology. The Web has also been a boon to organizations seeking an inexpensive means to publish and distribute information. And with increasing computing power, decreasing prices, free operating systems such as Linux, and free Web servers such as Apache, it s getting even easier for anyone to establish a presence on the Web. This chapter shows you how to install and configure the Apache Web server on your Red Hat Linux machine. 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 running server. Security is an important focal point throughout the descriptions and examples. Introduction to Web Servers The World Wide Web, as it is known today, began as a project of Tim Berners-Lee at the European Center for Particle Physics (CERN). The original goal was to provide one consistent interface for geographically dispersed researchers and scientists who needed access to information in a variety of formats. From this idea came the concept of using one client (the Web browser) to access data (text, images, sounds, video, and binary files) from several types of servers (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, Gopher, NNTP, WAIS, Finger, and streaming-media servers). The Web server usually has a simpler job: to accept HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) requests and send a response to the client. However, this job can get much more complex (as the server can also), executing functions such as: Performing access-control based on file permissions, user name/password pairs, and hostname/IP address restrictions. Parsing a document (substituting appropriate values for any conditional fields within the document) before sending it to the client. Spawning a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script or custom API (Application Program Interface) program to evaluate the contents of a submitted form, presenting a dynamically created document, or accessing a database. Sending a Java applet to the client. Logging any successful accesses, failures, and errors. The Apache Web server was originally based on HTTPd, a free server from NCSA (the National Center for Supercomputing Applications). At the time, HTTPd was the most common server on the Internet.
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