Why Use Apache over other Web Servers

The apache webserver is free and available on a wide variety of UNIX operating systems (as well as Windows). Thus if you want to create a mirror of this site, it is not a problem to use a free web-server that the CCP14 will help you with.

It is presently the most popular web-server on the internet and comes with convenient, enhanced functionality not easily available on other web-servers. This includes a powerful redirection meta-language as well as fixing up common spelling errors. Perl can also be compiled inside the server to provide extra increases in performance for Perl based scripts

There is a large base of on-line, web and newsgroup based help, commbined and technical books (including a Apache for Dummies book) meaning problems can generally be solved. Linux on PC is probably a better system to use than an SGI O2 as it has a wide user base; but an SGI O2 was chosen as this type of system is supported at the Daresbury Laboratory.

As of writing this, Apache 1.3.0 (1.3.1 just announced) is the latest version but seems to be buggy on an SGI O2 running IRIX 6.3. While the server compiled very easily using the ./configure command, on attempting to run the server, a variety of errors occured. There are a number of complaints about this version of Apache and it looks like 1.2.6 is a more tested version to be using. For CCP14 based applications, Apache 1.2.6 is quite adequate.

Be wary on using 1.3.0 documentation as a guide for doing on the fly configuring of 1.2.6. It is not easy to find the old 1.2.6 documentation on the website. It is at http://www.apache.org/docs-1.2/ or
http://www.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/apache/docs-1.2/

Where to get this webserver

The main Apache website is at http://www.apache.org.

On entering the website, it is possible to go to a close mirror site, of which there are many all over the place. You can find a closer mirror site automatically using the Apache "find a closer mirror site" CGI script at http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi.

The Apache distribution directory is at http://www.apache.org/dist/. Download the apache_1.2.6.tar.gz (or .Z) file. (It is possible to get binaries).

Apache Modules

• Mod_rewrite (rewrite_module) - redirection module
  • http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html
  • http://www.engelschall.com/pw/apache/rewriteguide/
• Mod_spelling (speling_module) - fixes up common spelling errors and incorrect case.
• lbnamed (not installed but good to know about) - load balancing of name servers - (http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~schemers/docs/lbnamed/lbnamed.html)
  (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~yatin/ptm/related.html)
  
• Mod_throttle (not installed but good to know about) - controls/even outs speed of downloads in case part of site is saturating the rest. (http://www.bigrock.com/~mlovell/throttle/)
  Background from the Mod_Throttle homepage. (Being a specialist scientific site, overloading of the CCP14 server is not presently an issue. Conjested international links is the main problem on getting programs to users.)

  "Mod_Throttle 
  User specific throttling for Apache 1.2.x
  Cut to the chase
  I'll admit it - I've been web master for a number of adult sites, some 
  professional and some personal. One thing you can be certain of with 
  sites with adult content is that you're going to have traffic. The first 
  site I set up on a personal basis sat behind a 28.8kbps modem link, what 
  a mistake. As soon as the site was discovered, it was saturated. I upgraded 
  to 128kbps frame relay link and swamped it within a week or so as well. After 
  a bit, I had to upgrade to 384kbps, but no joy. At that point I had to grit 
  my teeth and go all the way to T1. One thing about T1 links is that they 
  are expensive, and I started selling web hosting to support my habit. 
  Unfortunately, on the first night at T1 speeds, I got a rather irate 
  phone call from my up stream provider. It seemed I was maxing out the link 
  and was all my my lonesome swamping the Cisco 2500 that I was attached to.
  ...stuff deleted...
  In the end I wrote mod_throttle. Mod_throttle started as a series of
  hacks on mod_limit, but there's very little code left from it at this point.
  Mod_throttle's main function is to set average Bps limits for individual
  customers. It also supports a greatly enhanced version of mod_limit's
  status display, so you can actually see who's pushing the envelope.
  Mod_throttle works by inserting increasingly long delays in service
  when a user is over their limit.
  
  How well does it work? For me it works marvelously. It's reduced the
  memory/cpu loads on my server by two-thirds and keeps the users
  exactly in their limits with as little pain as possible." 
  

Compiling and Installing the Web Server

The stages for compiling and installing the apache 1.2.6 web server are: (Note: You will need root mode to install the executable. While you can get around this with a /usr/local set to a user who administers this area but apache can only be start to listen to the default port 80 as "superuser/root".)

• Extract the tar.gz or tar.Z file
• Add in the mod_spelling module into the src directory.
• Manually configure the Configuration file and tell it you want to use mod_spelling and mod_rewrite
• Run the ./Configure program (it should detect your system and set things up OK)
• Run make to compile apache.
• Run make install to install the program into the /usr/local/etc/httpd directory with all the configuration directories where you need them.

To extract the apache distribution file type either

• gzip -d < apache_1.2.6.tar.gz | tar xvof -
• gzip -d < apache_1.2.6.tar.Z | tar xvof - or uncompress -c < apache_1.2.6.tar.gz | tar xvof -

This creates an apache_1.2.6 subdirectory. Go into this directory and then go into the src subdirectory (cd apache_1.2.6/src).

Copy the mod_speling.c module that you downloaded into the src directory.

Configuring the Configuration file

• Copy the Configuration.tmpl file to Configuration.
  
• Using your favourite UNIX editor, edit the Configuration file and
  • un rem (delete the #) for the line which has:
    

    Module rewrite_module    mod_rewrite.o

    (The mod_rewrite.o file will be created during compilation of apache.)
    
  • Add the following line so that mod_speling will be included

    Module speling_module     mod_speling.o

  • Save the file and exit the editor.

Run Configure script in the src directory (type ./Configure) and this will setup the makefile ready compiling.

Run make to compile the apache server and create the httpd executable.

The following may have to be done in "superuser/root" mode.
Assuming everything when nicely, run make install to install to:

• copy the httpd executable into the /usr/local/etc/httpd directory
• copy the starting configuration files into /usr/local/etc/httpd/conf directory. The 4 httpd config/control files are:
  • access.conf
  • httpd.conf
  • mime.types
  • srm.conf
• create the /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin directory
• copy default icons into the /usr/local/etc/httpd/icons directory
• create the /usr/local/etc/httpd/logs directory where logs and the httpd.pid file will hang out.

Configuring Apache

The CCP14 root web page area starts from a directory called:
/web_disc/ccp14/web_area

One thing to note is that this directory is not the root area for http://www.ccp14.ac.uk. Because the CCP14 server uses virtual domains, it is best to have a fall back directory where very old web browsers will go that do not recognise the virtual domain name protocol. This is the equivalent of going to the sv1.ccp14.ac.uk webserver (the real name of the O2 computer) where you are encouraged to upgrade to a relatively modern web browser but also have the possibility of browsing around from this area into the CCP14 web area using your old browser.

Other decisions are how to setup virtual domains, of which the domain names have to be inserted into the DNS. The network administrator would normally implement this. The virtual domains have been devided in such a way that people who would only want to mirror the roughly crystallographic part of the webserver could do so.

The main configuration stages for apache 1.2.6 are:

• Setting up access.conf (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/access.conf)
  • access restrictions, (e.g., security options for cgi-bin)
  • Setup of server-status so problems with the web-server can be diagnosed in real time.
  • Some short term kludges also allow the mod_rewrite to be used via httpd.conf to restrict access to some system areas within browse distance. Evil, but seems to work. This is mainly for regional password protected FTP based auto-mirroring of the entire CCP14 area where it can be an advantage for picking up this administration information as well.
• Setting up httpd.conf (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf)
  • Define the port to listen to
  • Username the server runs under
  • Server names, virtual names and configuration, redirecting web pages
  • Timeouts, number of active servers, etc
  • Enabling modules such as Mod Spelling
• Setting up mime.types (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/mime.types)
  • Defining default file types that the web server will recognise
  • Tricks" to get Perl scripts to execute
  • Download of gz, Z and some other file types correctly (default is they display as garbage on the screen).
  • Make sure the web server will also recognise the htm as html
• Setting up srm.conf (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/srm.conf)
  • Defining where the document root is.
  • Set the DirectoryIndex to relevant files. (index.html, index.htm, etc)
  • Use of fancy indexing (icons next to indexes of files)
  • Defining the name of the .htaccess file.
  • Setting the default type (ASCII - binary) that the web server will send over files it does not regonise from mime.types
  • Aliasing directories such as the /icons, /cgi-bin
  • Disabling on the fly encoding/decoding
  • Customizable error responses (http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html)
• Setting redirects on any old web pages. There should be no need for dead links as automatic redirects are a trivial thing to implement. This is done on the old web-server (http://www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14/)
• (Please note that when you change a configuration item in /usr/local/etc/httpd/conf, you have to restart the apache web server so that it takes effect).

Setting up access.conf (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/access.conf)

Generally most of the Apache options are safe but several options have to be set before the server will run correctly:

Document Root, in the CCP14 case:
<Directory /usr/people/ccp14/web_area>

Setting up server-status

Enable the following which allows you to look at problems with the web-server in real time via a web-interface. However, in theory, this would only work from within the computers/domains defined. http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/server-status

<Location /server-status>
SetHandler server-status

order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from .dl.ac.uk
allow from .ccp14.ac.uk
</Location>

This might also be a good time to tighten up the CGI security. Following is also how this was done, and also setting up for the RIB system which gives an example of how to restrict access by domain and/or password. (note: /cgi-bin is aliases to these real directories in httpd.conf and srm.conf)

<Directory /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin>
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -Indexes #means people cannot browse directories
                          #but can run the CGI scripts
</Directory>

<Directory /usr/local/rib>
AllowOverride None 
Options  +ExecCGI -Indexes #means people cannot browse directories
                          #but can run the CGI scripts
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

<Directory /usr/local/rib/cgi-bin/admin>
AllowOverride All  #Means you can define a .htaccess file 
                   #that only people who supply a username and password
                   #can do things in the admin area
Options  +ExecCGI +Indexes #means directories can be browsed
                           #and can also run the CGI scripts
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from .dl.ac.uk       #In theory, only people from these
allow from .ccp14.ac.uk    #domains can work in the RIB admin area
</Directory>

AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/httpd/doobry-twang/doobry/.htpasswd  #not real directory
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName doobryribusername   #not real username - use something you can remember (6 to 8 characters is good)
AuthType Basic
</Limit GET>
require user doobryribusername  #not real username - use something you can remember (6 to 8 characters is good)
</Limit>
<Limit POST>
require user doobryribusername   #not real username - use something you can remember (6 to 8 characters is good)
</Limit>

</Directory>

doobryribusername:kdinsldkldfk

Then, providing you have access permissions (and the username and password), you can go into http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/rib/cgi-bin/admin/RIB.pl to administer the RIB system.

Setting up httpd.conf (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf)

• Please note that much of the following may have to be tweaked depending on your computer power and amount of available RAM. The following has been setup and run on an SGI O2 MIPS R5000, Rev 2.1 200 MHZ with IRIX 6.3 and 128 Meg of RAM. In IRIX 6.3, toolchest gives you access via menu options to most diagnostics and installation options. The X-Windows based gr_osview tell you the CPU usage and gmemusage gives you the physical memory break down. For instance, gmemusage shows that by default, near idle there is 70,020K of memory free, and the 25 apache httpd deamons are taking up 4825K of memory. Thus if the number of child apache processes goes up to the maximum of 250, (~49 Meg of RAM) there should be plenty of room for the 48 Meg RAMs worth of processes to sit in ream memory.

• The server type is standalone
• You will normally be starting the web-server as super-user/root and using Port 80. it is possible to have this in user mode providing you use a Port greater than 1024(?) (8001 is sort of common) however, in the case of the CCP14 site, the web address then becomes http://www.ccp14.ac.uk:8001/.
• Insert the user and group that the web-server will run as. (this can be a bit confusing but while the web server is started as super-user/root, child processes run as a user. Some people create a username called "www" who has ownership of the web installation and configuration area. (The actual web pages can be owned by anyone, just make sure to enable read access for all)
• Insert the serverroot where the actually apache httpd executable is located (in this case /usr/local/etc/httpd)
• Insert the servername. This can be a Virtual name or the "real" name of the computer. In the case of the CCP14 site, the "name" of the server is sv1.ccp14.ac.uk. The virtual name area handles the www.ccp14.ac.uk domain name. The reason for this is for error handling of very old web browsers that cannot handle virtual names.
• As this is a scientific site (low usage compared to mainstream (pornography?) sites) and internet links are rather congested, give a generous Timeout of 1800 (seconds)
• KeepAlive On
• MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
• KeepaliveTimeout 60 (seconds)
• MinSpareServers 15
• MaxSpareServers 30
• StartServers 20
• MaxClients 250
• MaxRequestsPerChild 1000 (normally this is far lower but as Apache has a reputation of not having memory links, putting in high(er) performance mode is relatively safe)
• For the Mod Spelling option that was compiled into apache - enable this. This means that if people put the wrong CASE, or htm instead of html, the webserver will try and correct this rather than give an unfriendly error.

  #MOD SPELLING MODULE
  CheckSpelling On

• The following is possibly dodgy but as some of the admin area is within the browsable web area for password protected FTP based auto-mirroring purposes, this stops people browsing these areas using mod_rewrite to direct them elsewhere.

  # Redirect people who access admin areas somewhere else.
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^/bin/(.*) http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html [R]
  RewriteRule ^/dev/(.*) http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html [R]
  RewriteRule ^/etc/(.*) http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html [R]
  RewriteRule ^/mirrorbin/(.*) http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html [R]
  RewriteRule ^/lib/(.*) http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html [L,R]

• Setting up Virtual Hosts. This is very easy with Apache and name based did not give a problem. The trick is to have the root browsable area (http://sv1.ccp14.ac.uk - /web_disk/ccp14/web_area/) one directory back as a fall back for old browsers that do not understand virtual domain names. This is described above. The nice thing about mod_rewrite is that it is easy to redirect/fix kludges due to reorganising into extra virtual domain names; or if a mirror was removed. Thus in the case of experimental auto-mirroring of the NHSE.ORG site that may have been picked up by a search engine, this is redirected back to the original site. The main hints pages for MOD_REWRITE is at
  • CCP14 Main Site - www.ccp14.ac.uk

    <VirtualHost 193.62.124.194>
    ServerAdmin l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /web_disc/ccp14/web_area/web_live
    ServerName www.ccp14.ac.uk
    Alias /rib/ /usr/local/rib/
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/ccp14/
    ScriptAlias /rib/cgi-bin/ /usr/local/rib/cgi-bin/
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^//(.*) /$1 [R]   #the www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14 redirect seems to add an extra slash - 
                                  #so quick kludge to fix this up
    RewriteRule ^/CCP/CCP14/(.*) http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]   
                                  #In case people still have the www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14 mindset
    
              #The following is to redirect information mirrored under www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14 
              #Into their own virtual domains.
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/programming/(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/programming/(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/ill-hewat/(.*) http://icsd.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/ill-hewat/(.*) http://icsd.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/programming/gnu/(.*) http://gnu.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/programming/gnu/(.*) http://gnu.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/alife/santafe/(.*) http://www.santafe.edu/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/alife/santafe/(.*) http://www.santafe.edu/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/alife/santafe/(.*) ftp://ftp.santafe.edu/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/alife/santafe/(.*) ftp://ftp.santafe.edu/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/alife/(.*) http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/alife/(.*) http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/programming/(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/programming/(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/alife/(.*) http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/alife/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/alife/(.*) http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/alife/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/programming/nhse/(.*) http://www.nhse.org/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/programming/nhse/(.*) http://www.nhse.org/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/programming/netlib/(.*) http://netlib.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/programming/netlib/(.*) http://netlib.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/web-mirrors/programming/(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/web-mirrors/programming/(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/programming(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming$1 [L]
    RewriteRule ^//ccp/ccp14/ftp-mirror/programming(.*) http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming$1 [L,R]
    ErrorLog logs/www.ccp14.ac.uk-error_log
    TransferLog logs/www.ccp14.ac.uk-access_log
    </VirtualHost>

  • CCP14 Netlib auto-mirror - netlib.ccp14.ac.uk

    <VirtualHost 193.62.124.194>
    ServerAdmin l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /web_disc/ccp14/web_area/netlib
    ServerName netlib.ccp14.ac.uk
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/netlib/
    ErrorLog logs/netlib.ccp14.ac.uk-error_log
    TransferLog logs/netlib.ccp14.ac.uk-access_log
    </VirtualHost>

  • CCP14 Gnu auto-mirror - gnu.ccp14.ac.uk

    <VirtualHost 193.62.124.194>
    ServerAdmin l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /web_disc/ccp14/web_area/gnu
    ServerName gnu.ccp14.ac.uk
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/gnu/
    ErrorLog logs/gnu.ccp14.ac.uk-error_log
    TransferLog logs/gnu.ccp14.ac.uk-access_log
    </VirtualHost>

  • CCP14 A-life/Artificial Life auto-mirror - alife.ccp14.ac.uk

    <VirtualHost 193.62.124.194>
    ServerAdmin l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /web_disc/ccp14/web_area/alife
    ServerName alife.ccp14.ac.uk
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/alife/
    ErrorLog logs/alife.ccp14.ac.uk-error_log
    TransferLog logs/alife.ccp14.ac.uk-access_log
    </VirtualHost>

  • CCP14 Programming auto-mirrors - programming.ccp14.ac.uk

    <VirtualHost 193.62.124.194>
    ServerAdmin l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /web_disc/ccp14/web_area/programming
    ServerName programming.ccp14.ac.uk
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^/cgi-bin/netlibget.pl/(.*) http://www.netlib.org/cgi-bin/netlibget.pl/$1 [R]
    RewriteRule ^/netlib/(.*) http://netlib.ccp14.ac.uk/$1 [R,L]
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/programming/
    ErrorLog logs/programming.ccp14.ac.uk-error_log
    TransferLog logs/programming.ccp14.ac.uk-access_log
    </VirtualHost>

  • CCP14 Gnu auto-mirror - gnu.ccp14.ac.uk

    <VirtualHost 193.62.124.194>
    ServerAdmin l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /web_disc/ccp14/web_area/icsd
    ServerName icsd.ccp14.ac.uk
    RewriteRule ^/dif/(.*) /$1 [R,L]
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/icsd/
    ErrorLog logs/icsd.ccp14.ac.uk-error_log
    TransferLog logs/icsd.ccp14.ac.uk-access_log
    </VirtualHost>

Setting up mime.types (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/mime.types)

The mime.types file sets the file extensions that the apache web server will properly recognise. Normally this is kosher but a few things seem to be missing that have to be added manually.

• Confirm that the web server will also recognise the htm as html

  text/html			html htm

• In Apache 1.2.6, it does not seem to have perl/cgi scripts recognised as an executable file and consequently, only displays the executable text. Add the following so the server knows to execute the perl/cgi scripts.

  application/x-httpd-cgi		pl

• Apache displays UNIZ style gz and Z compressed files as text (yuck) where it should prompt the web browser to save the file. Make sure the following lines are as follows (and disable the AddEncoding lines in the srm.conf file)

  application/x-compress          Z
  application/x-gzip              gz

• Little hint. If you know certain file formats are binary or ascii, declare this in the mime.types file so that people get nice formatting text (for ASCII) and prompted to save the binary. Examples of this are the Philips RD/SD format and Siemens/Bruker RAW binary file format. Trying to save these without them being declared as binary files can cause them to be corrupted as the web server sends them over as ASCII due to the default in srm.conf being DefaultType text/plain. There could be a temptation to change this default to DefaultType application/octet-stream except some web browsers have the habit of putting unwanted extensions (*.exe) on the files.

  application/octet-stream	bin dms lha lzh exe class rd sd raw
  text/plain			txt text

Setting up srm.conf (/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf/srm.conf)

• Set the DocumentRoot to where the root area of your web files are (in the case of the CCP14, /web_disc/ccp14/web-area
• Set the DirectoryIndex to relevant files. In this case, index.html, index.htm, mirror.htm, tutorial.htm and xfit.htm. (normally this would just be index.html and index.htm, but there is some legacy stuff here)
• Set FancyIndexing to on so you get nice icons next to index lists.
• Keep with the local AccessFileName of .htaccess unless you want it as some other name for extra security. (e.g., .htdoobry)
• DefaultType of text/plain is good. If some binary files come over as ASCII, fix up the mime.types file so they are properly characterised. This is described in the above section on mime.types.
• Disable AccEncoding as this can to weird things. If the user wants a tar.gz file - give them a tar.gz file(?)
• Alias the /icons/ to where your icons directory is (in CCP14 case, /usr/local/etc/httpd/icons/)
• Alias ScriptAlias to where your common CGI programs are located. (in the CCP14 case ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/)
• Setup the error responses to the way you like them. In the CCP14 case (possibly non-optimal or non-standard):

  #1) plain text
  ErrorDocument 500 http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html
  #    2) local redirects
  ErrorDocument 404 http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html
  #    3) external redirects
  ErrorDocument 402 http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/bad-link.html

Configuring redirects so old links will correctly forward

As http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/ was originally at http://www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14/, it is important that everything redirects. All decent web-servers have a redirect option and it is just a matter of requesting the web-administrator of that machine to set the redirects. http://www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14/ is a Netscape based server and has no problem doing this.

The same goes with an old address on the gserv1.dl.ac.uk machine such this it also redirects correctly. http://gserv1.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP14/

Manually Starting and stopping the apache 1.2.6 server

To Stop:

kill -TERM `cat /usr/local/etc/httpd/logs/httpd.pid`

/usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd

Automatically startup of the server on an SGI O2 running IRIX 6.3 (rc2.d)

Refer for info on this under: Installing Apache 1.3.3 - Automatic startup of the server

Checking Server Status

http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/server-status

Another method is Telnet to the server and check if it is running that way.

telnet www.ccp14.ac.uk 80           [RETURN](80  stands for port 80)
HEAD / HTTP/1.0 
  (type [RETURN] twice)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 16:42:15 GMT
Server: Apache/1.2.6
Last-Modified: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:03:06 GMT
ETag: "41d6d8-12be-35a61f1a"
Content-Length: 4798
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

Connection closed by foreign host.