Week 5 Blog

Understanding and Configuring Web Servers

Web servers

Web servers is how we are viewing this blog, which is on the internet. However, like most lessons this focuses on web servers in a business, which is crucial. Web servers are like most servers, where users can request files and then send it to them. We used very basic HTML in the lab this week. When the client views it through a web browser it’ll look different as it did when editing it in vi. The protocols

Client requests web server through internet. The web server gets information from servers from the secure private local area network. The data sometimes in the form of HTML is then sent to the client.

Apache overview and configuration guidelines

Like Professor said in the lecture this week, Apache is the most popular web server. Once you download Apache you’ll find that there’s lots of modules that you can configure. The configuration file is found at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. The server name is important, because that’s how users will reach it. The server name can either be a domain name with www.website.com:80 or you can use an IP address like 192.186.0.2. For the server admin you want it to be the email of the administrator. This is so that if there’s an issue they can be contacted. Security can always be an issue when dealing with web servers. For instance, you don’t want everyone to know which modules are installed. This is because a potential hacker can see weaknesses like a lack of security modules and attack the webserver. There’s many way to configure how long a web server maintains its connection after a request has been fulfilled. Timeout, KeepAlive, MaxKeepAliveRequests, and KeepAliveTimeout’s perimeters (in seconds) can be changed.

The .htaccess file

We use httpd.conf to change parts of the website and directory hierarchies, but sometimes that’s not enough. Therefore the .htaccess files is great for when you need more control for the Apache server. This is where you can find additional functionality and modules. Broken links are something you’ve probably experienced in the past. However, sometimes you’re redirected to the site you meant to go to. This page request is perfect to relocate visitors to the current link. Password protection is also a common use of an .htaccess file. For instance, I don’t want anyone to be able to login to my DeVry account. Directories and subdirectories can be secured by using the .htaccess file. So if you’re looking to make changes and can’t find anything in httpd.conf, you’ll most likely find it in the .htaccess file.