Hosting Provided By

howto.html

From: Rob Hartill <robh(at)imdb.com>
Date: Sat Dec 07 1996 - 10:29:44 EST

Here's a replacment for manual/misc/howto.html Can someone please drop it into place. I'm not subscribed to this list so reply directly to me if there's a problem. thanks

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Some 'how to' tips for the Apache httpd server">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="apache,redirect,robots,rotate,logfiles">
<TITLE>Apache HOWTO documentation</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

<H1>Apache HOWTO documentation</H1>

How to:
<ul>
<li>redirect an entire server or directory
<li>reset your log files
<li>stop/restrict robots
</ul>

<HR>
<H2><A name="redirect">How to redirect an entire server or directory</A></H2>

One way to redirect all requests for an entire server is to setup a
<CODE>Redirect</Code> to a cgi script which outputs a 301 or 302 status
and the location of the other server.

By using a cgi-script you can intercept various requests and treat them
specially, e.g. you might want to intercept POST requests, so that the client isn't redirected to a script on the other server which expects POST information (a redirect will lose the POST information.)

Do you need help?

Here's how to redirect all requests to a script... In the server
configuration file,
<blockquote><code>ScriptAlias /

/usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin/redirect_script</code></blockquote>
 

and here's a simple perl script to redirect

<blockquote><code>

#!/usr/local/bin/perl 
 

print "Status: 302 Moved Temporarily\r Location: http://www.some.where.else.com/\r\n\r\n"; 
 
</code></blockquote>

You can of course have a more sophisticated script that checks for
QUERY_STRING and sends that too if that's what you need.
<HR>

<H2><A name="logreset">How to reset your log files</A></H2>

Sooner or later, you'll want to reset your log files (access_log and
error_log) because they are too big, or full of old information you don't need.

<CODE>access.log</CODE> typically grows by 1Mb for each 10,000 requests.

Most people's first attempt at replacing the logfile is to just move the
logfile or remove the logfile. This doesn't work.

Do you need more help?

Apache will continue writing to the logfile at the same offset as before the
logfile moved. This results in a new logfile being created which is just as big as the old one, but it now contains thousands (or millions) of null characters.

The correct procedure is to move the logfile, then signal Apache to tell it to reopen the logfiles.

Apache is signaled using the SIGHUP (-1) signal. e.g.
<blockquote><code>

mv access_log access_log.old 
kill -1 `cat httpd.pid`
</code></blockquote>


Note: <code>httpd.pid</code> is a file containing the process id
of the Apache httpd daemon, Apache saves this in the same directory as the log files.

Many people use this method to replace (and backup) their logfiles on a
nightly or weekly basis.
<HR>

<H2><A name="stoprob">How to stop or restrict robots</A></H2>

Ever wondered why so many clients are interested in a file called
<code>robots.txt</code> which you don't have, and never did have?

These clients are called robots (also known as crawlers,
spiders and other cute name) - special automated clients which wander around the web looking for interesting resources.

Can we help you?

Most robots are used to generate some kind of web index which
is then used by a search engine to help locate information.

<code>robots.txt</code> provides a means to request that robots limit their
activities at the site, or more often than not, to leave the site alone.

When the first robots were developed, they had a bad reputation for sending hundreds/thousands of requests to each site, often resulting in the site being overloaded. Things have improved dramatically since then, thanks to Guidelines for Robot Writers, but even so, some robots may exhibit unfriendly behavior which the webmaster isn't willing to tolerate, and will want to stop.

Another reason some webmasters want to block access to robots, is to
stop them indexing dynamic information. Many search engines will use the data collected from your pages for months to come - not much use if your serving stock quotes, news, weather reports or anything else that will be stale by the time people find it in a search engine.

If you decide to exclude robots completely, or just limit the areas
in which they can roam, create a <CODE>robots.txt</CODE> file; refer to the robot information pages provided by Martijn Koster for the syntax.


</BODY>
</HTML>
Received on Sat Dec 7 07:30:43 1996

Contemporary messages sorted: [ By Date ] [ By Thread ] [ By Subject ] [ By Author ] [ By messages with attachments ]

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Aug 24 2006 - 14:44:46 EDT