Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5 - DEPLOYMENT Deployment Manual page 362

Chapter 22. Apache HTTP Server
When a user requests the page http://example/this_directory/, they get either the
DirectoryIndex page, if it exists, or a server-generated directory list. The default for
DirectoryIndex is index.html and the index.html.var type map. The server tries to find
either of these files and returns the first one it finds. If it does not find one of these files and Options
Indexes is set for that directory, the server generates and returns a listing, in HTML format, of the
subdirectories and files within the directory, unless the directory listing feature is turned off.
DocumentRoot
DocumentRoot is the directory which contains most of the HTML files which are served in response
to requests. The default DocumentRoot, for both the non-secure and secure Web servers, is the /
var/www/html directory. For example, the server might receive a request for the following document:
http://example.com/foo.html
The server looks for the following file in the default directory:
/var/www/html/foo.html
To change the DocumentRoot so that it is not shared by the secure and the non-secure Web servers,
Section 22.7, "Virtual
refer to
ErrorDocument
The ErrorDocument directive associates an HTTP response code with a message or a URL to be
sent back to the client. By default, the Web server outputs a simple and usually cryptic error message
when an error occurs. The ErrorDocument directive forces the Web server to instead output a
customized message or page.
Important
To be valid, the message must be enclosed in a pair of double quotes ".
ErrorLog
ErrorLog specifies the file where server errors are logged. By default, this directive is set to /var/
log/httpd/error_log.
ExtendedStatus
The ExtendedStatus directive controls whether Apache generates basic (off) or detailed server
status information (on), when the server-status handler is called. The server-status handler is
called using Location tags. More information on calling server-status is included in Location.
Group
Specifies the group name of the Apache HTTP Server processes.
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Hosts".