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There is no point trying to run Apache unless TCP/IP is set up and running on your machine. A quick test is to ping some IP — and if you can't think of a real one, ping yourself:
>ping 127.0.0.1
If TCP/IP is working, you should see some confirming message, like this:
Pinging 127.0.0.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32 ....
If you don't see something along these lines, defer further operations until TCP/IP is working.
It is important to remember that internally, Windows Apache is essentially the same as the Unix version and that it uses Unix-style forward slashes (/) rather than MS-DOS- and Windows-style backslashes (\) in its file and directory names, as specified in various files.
There are two ways of running Apache under Win32. In addition to the command-line approach, you can run Apache as a "service" (available on Windows NT/2000, or a pseudoservice on Windows 95, 98, or Me). This is the best option if you want Apache to start automatically when your machine boots and to keep Apache running when you log off.
To run Apache from a console window, select the Apache server option from the Start menu.
Alternatively — and under Win95/98, this is all you can do — click on the MS-DOS prompt to get a DOS session window. Go to the /Program Files/Apache directory with this:
>cd "\Program Files\apache"
The Apache executable, apache.exe,is sitting here. We can start it running, to see what happens, with this:
>apache -s
You might want to automate your Apache startup by putting the necessary line into a file called go.bat. You then only need to type:
go[RETURN]
Since this is the same as for the Unix version, we will simply say "type go" throughout the book when Apache is to be started, and thus save lengthy explanations.
When we ran Apache, we received the following lines:
Apache/<version number> Syntax error on line 44 of /apache/conf/httpd.conf ServerRoot must be a valid directory
To deal with the first complaint, we looked at the file \Program Files\apache\conf \httpd.conf. This turned out to be a formidable document that, in effect, compresses all the information we try to convey in the rest of this book into a few pages. We could edit it down to something more lucid, but a sounder and more educational approach is to start from nothing and see what Apache asks for. The trouble with simply editing the configuration files as they are distributed is that the process obscures a lot of default settings. If and when someone new has to wrestle with it, he may make fearful blunders because it isn't clear what has been changed from the defaults. We suggest that you build your Config files from the ground up. To prevent this one from getting confused with them, rename it if you want to look at it:
>ren httpd.conf *.cnk
Otherwise, delete it, and delete srm.conf and access.conf :
>del srm.conf >del access.conf
When you run Apache now, you see:
Apache/<version number> fopen: No such file or directory httpd: could not open document config file apache/conf/httpd.conf
And we can hardly blame it. Open edit :
>edit httpd.conf
and insert the line:
# new config file
The # makes this a comment without effect, but it gives the editor something to save. Run Apache again. We now see something sensible:
... httpd: cannot determine local host name use ServerName to set it manually
What Apache means is that you should put a line in the httpd.conf file:
ServerName your_host_name
Now when you run Apache, you see:
>apache -s Apache/<version number> _
The _ here is meant to represent a blinking cursor, showing that Apache is happily running.
You will notice that throughout this book, the Config files always have the following lines:
... User webuser Group webgroup ...
These are necessary for Unix security and, happily, are ignored by the Win32 version of Apache, so we have avoided tedious explanations by leaving them in throughout. Win32 users can include them or not as they please.
You can now get out of the MS-DOS window and go back to the desktop, fire up your favorite browser, and access http://yourmachinename/. You should see a cheerful screen entitled "It Worked!," which is actually \apache\htdocs\index.html.
When you have had enough, hit ^C in the Apache window.
Alternatively, under Windows 95 and from Apache Version 1.3.3 on, you can open another DOS session window and type:
apache -k shutdown
This does a graceful shutdown, in which Apache allows any transactions currently in process to continue to completion before it exits. In addition, using:
apache -k restart
performs a graceful restart, in which Apache rereads the configuration files while allowing transactions in progress to complete.
To start Apache as a service, you first need to install it as a service. Multiple Apache services can be installed, each with a different name and configuration. To install the default Apache service named "Apache," run the "Install Apache as Service (NT only)" option from the Start menu. Once this is done, you can start the "Apache" service by opening the Services window (in the Control Panel), selecting Apache, then clicking on Start. Apache will now be running in the background. You can later stop Apache by clicking on Stop. As an alternative to using the Services window, you can start and stop the "Apache" service from the control line with the following:
NET START APACHE NET STOP APACHE
See http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/platform/windows.html#signalsrv for more information on installing and controlling Apache services.
Apache, unlike many other Windows NT/2000 services, logs any errors to its own error.log file in the logs folder within the Apache server root folder. You will not find Apache error details in the Windows NT Event Log.
After starting Apache running (either in a console window or as a service), it will be listening to port 80 (unless you changed the Listen directive in the configuration files). To connect to the server and access the default page, launch a browser and enter this URL: http://127.0.0.1
Once this is done, you can open the Services window in the Control Panel, select Apache, and click on Start. Apache then runs in the background until you click on Stop. Alternatively, you can open a console window and type:
>net start apache
To stop the Apache service, type:
>net stop apache
If you're running Apache as a service, you definitely will want to consider security issues. See Chapter 11 for more details.
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| 2.3. Setting Up a Unix Server |  | 2.5. Directives |
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