Learning to manage a Web server

How to choose a server for your platform

• Cern httpd on alpha Openvms
• Cern httpd on Unix (alpha ofs)
• Microsoft IIS on Nt (Pc pentium)
• Website on Windows 95 (Pc Pentium)

To do

• Upgrade to mod_ssl 2.8.7 or Apache_SSL 1.3.22+1.46 to avoid problems for security
• Install the latest PHP version (4.2x) to avoid problems for security.
• Create a cgi script which gives the daily agenda with informations about people on charge,seminars,etc
• Do statistics on httpd log files
• Make the italian version the default Bari home page
• Put in the same page,in the "Cosa succede" section a space for cliccable news.
• simplify name of sections
• Create a navigational bar.
• Put the same background on all sections.
• Eliminate the buttons on bottom replacing them with some icon near the navigational bar.
• Try to size better the menu on the left fo the six sections.
• Put on all pages the same names.
• Reinstall Perl on pcaleph after the disk failure. Remember also to associate perl scripts to the perl interpreter.

Problems

• Found on alboot around 100 "zombies" from httpd proxy. httpd was not working properly(error 403 on the request of the Welcome page). Where the two things connected?
  Solved by stopping and restarting both the server and the proxy server.
  Ok,the real problem was that from mid October the restart from inetd at 24 hours Saturday is not working properly:speak with Gervasoni.
  Problem solved!Quando si fa ripartire a mano httpd, bisogna usare il comando: /user/local/bin/httpd -r /user/www/httpd.conf cioe' con la specifica completa delle directories,altrimenti il restart da cron (fatto Sabato sera a mezzanotte) non riesce!
• How do you check the situation on alboot?We need something like the topcpu display on Vax.
• On axpba0 disk$server has disappeared:modify httpd.conf and other addresses in html.
• Trying to understand the zombie creation problem by using a log file.
• Need to do some cleaning on log file!
• In algorithmic image gallery la figura data come risposta spesso non arriva in tempo.
• Trovato proxy non funzionante:
  dare : /user/local/bin/httpd -r /user/www/proxy.conf -p 8001
  su alboot.
• See if you can solve the zombies problem by putting a timelimit!
• After change to gs3 scripts that require conversion of pictures from ps to gif (like the one that does a simulation of marbles falling on rows of nails) don't work anymore.
• Sometime scripts on Unix machines seem to have problems.For example the counter for the second time in a year has zeroed its database.

La lista delle persone e dei numeri telefonici

• Aggiornamento non facile:(per la rubrica e' necessario usare edfor sul Vax).
• La tabella e' enorme e difficile da caricare (70K).
• Perche' non aggiungere anche i numeri telefonici e altre informazioni alla tabella?
• Forse converrebbe spezzarla in tanti files quante sono le lettere dell'alfabeto?
• Perche' non implementare il tutto con un data base?
  Ad esempio, Giorgio Maggi potrebbe completare l'archivio INFN aggiungendo anche le persone che ora non compaiono e i campi homepage e indirizzo di posta elettronica.A partire da questo database potrebbe produrre ,a ogni modifica, una tabella aggiornata coi seguenti campi:
  1. Nome con eventuale homepage attaccata.
  2. Indicazioni se dip. INFN,docente,laureando,etc
  3. Indirizzo di e-mail con link mailto:...
  4. Num. tel. nel Dip.
  5. Num. tel. casa?
  6. Link con la scritta "ricerca altr informazioni" a uno script http://www.ba.infn.it/cgi-bin/nph-ricerca.pl? con attaccato dopo? il nome della persona con + come separatore tra cognome e nome. Questo script creerebbe una pagina con link a servizi di ricerca e altri elenchi telefonici online(es Cern,Infn,etc)

Home page

Controllo log

X500 directory disappeared for University staff

Test/installation of Apache server

Files:
• Three configuration files + mime.types in a special directory conf instead of the unique file for Cern httpd.
• New icons directory created
• New logs directory created(replaces the old logdirectory)
  Contains files access_log error_log and httpd.pid
• Modified in /sbin/rc3.d file with commands to restart server after reboot

Commands:
• To know what are the modules included: httpd -l
• To stop/start server:

   /user/local/bin/apache/httpd -f /user/www/conf/httpd.conf
   ps -eaf |grep httpd
   kill -TERM pidnumber
  

Tests
1. Asking the same page 100 times (only text, no images) I got the same time from both servers (45 seconds).
2. Asking a page with around ten small images is faster with Apache(900 ms instead of 1100 ms).
3. Scripts in cgi-bin directory : ok!
   It seems that the old problem with Cern httpd: scripts execution sometime results in a Document contains no data , has disappeared. Scripts nph-(non parsed header) work ok with the same code. For the normal script I have to take away from the first line Print 200 OK\n
4. Scripts in other directories : ok!
   For this:
   • Add directive directory in access.conf
   • Add directive Scriptalias in srm.conf
5. Test applet Java: Ok!

Implementation of protected directory
• Using still the old htadm to manage passwords:it works fine but for one thing:it adds to user:password something like :username that MUST BE DELETED
• Tested the protection of a directory with a list of allowed users by using a file .htaccess

Adding a virtual directory in IIS

Security and Privacy protection with Apache

• Do we need to reinstall PHP?
• Do we need to reinstall mysql?
• Install also graphic extensions of PHP
• What about Frontpage extensions?
• Why CGI-bin don't return image in time?
• What we have to do to conform to GARR UPC?

• Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.6.4 OpenSSL/0.9.4
• PHP/4.0.2
• gd1.8.3 (requires libpng, jpeg-6b, zlib)optional freetype library

How to protect a directory

Starting Apache on cluster

/user/local/apache1/bin/httpd -DSSL