Web Services
Mac
OS X comes with
Apache,
an open source web server responsible for more than half of all the
Internet’s web sites.[18] At its most basic level, Apache runs as a daemon named
httpd
that supports the Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP); it listens to web surfers’ requests
(on port 80, by default) and replies with response codes and web
pages.
Apache Configuration
Apache’s configuration information lies in the
/etc/httpd
directory, mainly in the file
/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
. This file sets up options
through lists of directives and values, often mapped to filesystem
directories and other criteria. Many of its options are highly
specific to Mac OS X, so that Apache works “out of
the box”; turning on web services with a single
click in the Sharing pane (see Section 12.2.1) launches a full-featured web server on a
fresh Mac OS X installation. Here are some highlights (and variances
from the defaults that are in a platform-independent Apache
installation):
The
DirectoryRoot
directive defines the location of the server’s default location for HTML files and other web-servable documents—in other words, what you’d see if you pointed your web browser to http://localhost/. Mac OS X sets this directive to/Library/WebServer/Documents/
.Following the usual Unix tradition, Mac OS X Apache lets a host’s individual users build personal web sites in their own home folders, accessible by pointing a web browser to
http://
network_address
/~username
. To find your network address, go to the ...
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