Lab 9a - Basic Web Server Configuration

Explanation and Requirements

First, make sure your DNS is working for your domain (e.g. _{it.netserv.edu.au}). If you didn’t previously, you may also like to add an entry to the DNS for _{www.it.netserv.edu.au} whose IP address is that of your virtual machine. As noted in previous labs, make sure that there in consistency in what IP address appears in your zone file, and the IP address currently on Ethernet interface ens37. Also, make sure that the top “nameserver” line in the /etc/resolv.conf points to your nameserver. If your DNS needs fixing, refer to the earlier DNS lab. You need DNS working for the web server configuration below.

Edit the _{/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf} file. To start with, you should modify ServerName, and note down the DocumentRoot directory. DocumentRoot is where the HTML documents for your web site should be placed. Restart your web server: _{systemctl restart httpd}

You can test your web server by using the http://www.it.netserv.edu.au (or whatever you set up) in the browser.

You can create a file named _index.html in your DocumentRoot directory. By default your DocumentRoot is

/var/www/html, unless you changed it when you edited the httpd.conf file.

Common problems:

• When you attempt to start/restart the httpd daemon, if you get a message about unable to bind to port 80, this is probably because you need to be root to start the web server!

• Cannot view my index.html? eg: 404 error or 403 error? Check that the file exists in the correct DocumentRoot and/or the file has public read permission and directory has have public read/execute permissions.

Try executing _{ps -ef | grep httpd}. Note that the web service runs under the userid apache. Hence all files in the _/var/www directory need to be able to be read by userid apache.

• Getting a FAILED error on startup, or an error 500 from the browser. This is usually a configuration error. Use apachectl –t to check your config.