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Unit 4: Apache Server Installation in Window

• FileInfo? Directives controlling document types. Notes
• Indexes? Directives controlling directory indexing.
• Limit? Directives controlling host access.

• Options? Directives controlling specific directory features.
You can control which of these directive groups can appear in perdirectory configuration files
by using theAllowOverride directive. AllowOverride can also take an All or a None argument.
All means that directives belonging to all groups can appear in the configuration file. None
disables perdirectory files in a directory and any of its subdirectories. Listing 4 shows how to
disable perdirectory configuration files for the server as a whole. This improves performance
and is the default Apache configuration.

Listing 4 Disabling PerDirectory Configuration Files
1. <Directory />
2. AllowOverride none

3. </Directory>

4.3 Apache Log File

One of the many pieces of the Website puzzle is Web logs. Traffic analysis is central to most
Websites, and the key to getting the most out of your traffic analysis revolves around how
you configure your Web logs. Apache is one of the most if not the most powerful open source
solutions for Website operations. You will find that Apache’s Web logging features are flexible
for the single Website or for managing numerous domains requiring Web log analysis.

For the single site, Apache is pretty much configured for logging in the default install. The initial
httpd.conf file (found in/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf in most cases) should have a section on
logs that looks similar to this (Apache 2.0.x), with descriptive comments for each item. Your
default logs folder will be found in/etc/httpd/logs. This location can be changed when dealing
with multiple Websites, as we’ll see later. For now, let’s review this section of log configuration.

4.3.1 Error Logs
The error log contains messages sent from Apache for errors encountered during the course of
operation. This log is very useful for troubleshooting Apache issues on the server side.

Apache Log Tip: If you are monitoring errors or testing your server, you can use the command
line to interactively watch log entries. Open a shell session and type “tail –f /path/to/error_log”. This
will show you the last few entries in the file and also continue to show new entries as they occur.

There are no real customization options available, other than telling Apache where to establish
the file, and what level of error logging you seek to capture. First, let’s look at the error log
configuration code from httpd.conf.
ErrorLog logs/error_log

You may wish to store all error-related information in one error log. If so, the above is fine, even
for multiple domains. However, you can specify an error log file for each individual domain
you have. This is done in the <VirtualHost> container with an entry like this:

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