| Red Hat Linux 7.1: The Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide | ||
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During the installation of the secure server packages, if you are upgrading Apache, you will need to be aware of two issues:
In the version of Apache included in Red Hat Linux 7.1, the DocumentRoot is /var/www/html.
If you customized your Apache configuration file (httpd.conf), you will want to know what will happen to your customizations during the upgrade process.
Basically, the DocumentRoot is the directory on your system which holds most of the Web pages served by your Apache Web server. The DocumentRoot is set by a configuration directive in Apache's configuration file, httpd.conf. If you are unfamiliar with the DocumentRoot configuration directive, see the section called DocumentRoot in Chapter 14 for a more detailed explanation.
Before Red Hat Linux 7.0, the Apache provided with Red Hat Linux used /home/httpd/html as the DocumentRoot. In the default (non-secure) version of Apache's configuration file, the DocumentRoot is /usr/local/apache/htdocs. It is also possible that you (or a predecessor) used an entirely different DocumentRoot. In Red Hat Linux 7.1, however, the default DocumentRoot is /var/www/html.
Does this matter to you? It does, if you used Apache with a different DocumentRoot, and you want to serve those same Web pages with your new configuration of Apache. Any Web pages that were previously served from a different DocumentRoot will not be found (or served) by the Apache shipped with Red Hat Linux 7.1 in its default configuration. You will need to take one of the following steps:
Move all of the files in your old DocumentRoot (/home/httpd/html, /usr/local/apache/htdocs, or wherever) to the new DocumentRoot (/var/www/html).
or
Edit the Apache configuration file and change all references to the DocumentRoot back to the old directory path.
The solution you choose depends upon your system's configuration. Generally, if you automount /home on your system, you will not want to have your DocumentRoot in /home. On the other hand, if you do not have much space in /var, then you probably will not want your DocumentRoot in /var. You, or your system administrator, will have to decide the best solution based on your system's configuration and your Web server's needs. The secure Web server's default configuration is intended to address the needs of most Webmasters. Unfortunately, we cannot configure it for every individual situation.
If you had another version of Apache installed and you customized its configuration file or files, the configuration files will be saved in their directory with an extension of .rpmsave during the installation of Apache. If you had another version of Apache installed but you never altered its configuration file(s), they will be written over during the installation of this product.
After installing Apache, you can cut and paste the customizations from your old Apache configuration file(s) into the newly installed httpd.conf configuration file for your secure server. Please note that if you are going to use the Apache Configuration Tool, you must not edit httpd.conf by hand. Please see the Official Red Hat Linux Customization Guide for more information about the Apache Configuration Tool.