hi i'm VERY new to apache i just started it up and have the test page running and it looks fine
what i am trying to do is put some files and or directories from my box on the page so my friend can access my mp3s and whatnot
my uncle told me to get ssl for that
i checked the system and it says i have openssl
is this the same thing?
and if so.. how do i go about getting it to work and adding my directories to the page? all i have now is the test page and i haven't got a clue what to do now
i don't want to waste time downloading a different version of ssl if the version i have works
i use kde3 on redhat 7.3
does anyone have any help for me please?

If you have openssl you are all set. I'm running redhat 9 but I don't think things in this area have changed much. Your apache configuration files are in /etc/httpd (come to think of it I think some older versions had the httpd.conf file in /etc but I'm not sure of this.) In particular, /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf is the configuration file for ssl. Minimally, set your document root in this file to the directory you want to share. You can connect yourself (don't forget to use https://localhost instead of http://localhost) to test it out.

I think it should work using a default certificate if you just make the above change. (You may need to restart apache.) If you want more info redhat has more info on their web site (their manuals) and http://www.tldp.org has a HOWTO. (SSL-redhat-HOWTO) You won't need to generate your own certificates, etc but it might be worth a look through.

hey thanks howlie but when i went to /etc/httpd there was no conf.d directory
there is a conf directory and i went in there but there is no ssl.conf
....

also what exactly do i need to configure in this file??
assuming i do end up finding it that is..

First, decide what directory will be the document root for apache... that's where apache gets the HTML files for http://yourserver.com/ Any directory inside it will _also_ be accessible to the web, like http://yourserver.com/subdir/ . Set that in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, run 'killall -HUP httpd' and people can get to all files in that directory tree.

You'll also find SSL settings in httpd.conf, near the end. I'm not clear what you need the SSL for - it won't stop anyone on the net from looking at your webserver. (unless you configure it to require a client certificate or something... not a 5 minute job) As well as openssl you'll need either apache-ssl or mod_ssl ... have a read at www.modssl.org.

i sort of understand what you said but i don't want to go runnign through my system assuming i'm in the right file/folder editing files and whatnot.. think you could give some specifics please?
and also i don't know if this is a problem or not but i can only run apachectl with root not with my user
is that bad? if so should i change the file permission??

ok sorry i reread your instructions and did some playing around and finally got it to work and also the reason i want ssl is because of the certificate.. i don't want just anyone to access my files.. its ok for now i guess but i wanna get the ssl working

I haven't set up apache to require a SSL certificate, but I'm sure I saw a section on doing that on the modssl site.
It's not hard to password protect a directory (or the whole site) - done that a few times - or you could just "hide" a directory by not having any links to it from the entry page - but those are not as safe as using an SSL certificate.