I have run Apache2 in Windows, and had everything set up on my computer to host my website at localhost, everything works, and I can upload to my Linux-hosted Apache2 Web host. httpd.comf was in one file and I could even run Perl scripts both on Windows and Linux without change, simply bt having the Apache in Drive C: and Perl at G:\bin\perl.exe.

I installed Apache2 on Linux Mint, a refacing of Ubuntu, I run the bin file and Paache2 shows the Ubuntu "It works!" page. That page is in /var/www/html.

I moved the original It works page to /var/www to place my Web page in the html directory.

First off, Ubuntu "simplifies" things by placing different sections of httpd.conf in include files, such as ports.conf where I find the Listen directive. I have yet to find the DocumentRoot directive.

With further reading, I am not supposed to be running the bin file directly, but instead I am supposed to be running the apache2ctl script which generates child processes and makes use of environmental variables.

O have no envvar file and do not know what to put in one if I create it. Second, it took me by surprise when I found myself showing the "It works!" page instead of the site I had placed in the html directory. I had my site showing on localhost at this time while I iron out the bugs.

I called index.html a new name and then I found Apache showing me the index of / to include my renamed Index.html and the html directory that contains my website.

I see another post on here from another LQ user that wants to know how to set permissions. His website is in the /var/www directory. That fact and mine now being in the www is different from what the It works page says is Ubuntu's default place for the web root.

I am running just an html site for now, and it will be hosted on the local amateur radio wireless mesh network that now carries 7 users and growing, with no Internet access involved. We have an email server, chat room and VOIP telephone service.

I have experience with hosted websites on Apache on Linux, and have run Ubuntu 6.06 through 12.04 before I dumped it because of the new desktop, and have now gotten back in it with Linux Mint and the Mate desktop. I am quite familiar with .htaccess and am reacquainting myself with the command line.

I have never successfully set up a virtual host, instead working with global values in the httpd.comf to accomplish what I want to do in a local test server.

I have had my site online on the mesh, but I want to do things the right way.

Questions: What to put in the envvar file, where to find the DocumenntRoot directive and some tutorial help with setting up Apache for online service.

I learned HTML, SHTML.XHTML, CSS and Perl all from online tutorials and a lot of Google.

Thanks for your help.

Edit 1: I just performed a Google search for 'envvar" and find that "envvar is a tiny JavaScript package for deriving JavaScript values from environment variables," quoting fronm Google.

Edit 2: I found a tutorial on LinuxMint.com: https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/805
This may help me locate some of the different parts of apache2.conf that are broken into bits and pieces by Ubuntu.

I have sorted this much out:
I set my Listen directive in ports.conf to 127.0.0.1:8090. Doing that got me to serving a site at /var/www instead of /var/www/html.

I went to 000-enabled.conf, where I found a <virtualhost *:80>.

I made that
#<virtualhost *:80>
<virtualhost 127.0.0.1:8090>



Further in I found a line that I commented out to read
#ServerName www.example.com and I added:
ServerName localhost

Also within that <virtualhost> container, I saw a DocumentRoot specifying /var/www/html.
In the Terminal I issued these commands:

sudo apache2ctl stop
sudo apache2ctl start

I visited localhost:8090 in my Firefox and saw the website I am hosting at /var/www/html.
Obviously I was not seeing this because of the port mismatch between Listen 8090 and <virtualhost *:80>. That was when I was serving out of /var/www when I ran apache2ctl after having changed the port specified in Listen between the time I served the website with a direct call to apache2 and the time I served it from apache2ctl.

Now I have a question:

sudo apache2ctl start
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' globally to suppress this message.

Here are my current thoughts:

In order to serve the site at localhost:80, and serve it on the mesh at example.local.mesh:8090, I need to globally set a Listen 127.0.0.1:80
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html

and set all of these values in my 000-default.conf as
<virtualhost 10.0.19.15:8090> ("10.0.19.15" is the IP address assigned to my computer)
Listen 10.0.19.15:8090
ServerName example.local.mesh
DocumentRoot /var/www/html

The global setting could be in ports.conf
The virtualhost setting could be in 000-default.conf

Then I could host a second site at example.2.local.mesh
Create a copy of 000-default.conf and give it a new name, include it in the apache2.conf
<virtualhost 10.0.18.15:8090>
Listen 10.0.19.15:8090
ServerName example.2.local.mesh
DocumentRoot /var/www/html2

If I am right on that part, I would also resolve this error with my global settings in ports.conf or apache2.conf:

apache2ctl start
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message.

Right now I am hosting my site on localhost:8090 by setting Listen 127.0.0.1:8090 and setting <virtualhost 127.0.0.1:8090 in 000-defaults.conf. I added the ServerName 'localhost' in the virtualhost container which already contains the DocumentRoot.

Having the DocumentRoot specified there, behind a <virtualhost *:80> with a .

Having the DocumentRoot specified there, behind a <virtualhost *:80> with a specified Listen on port 8090 resulted in my server giving me a /var/www DocumentRoot.

Now that I've written this up here, time to put it in play and see what happens.

Set in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Bounce and done.

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