Ok,

I just set up Debian Etch. When I browse to 127.0.0.1, I get the "It Works!" page, so Apache seems to be set up correctly. However, in /etc/apache2, my httpd.conf file is totally blank. I remember that file having content when running Apache in Windows, is it just diffrent in Linux, or is there something wrong there?

Also, I read a page that mentioned being able to access files from any users home folder, so long as they had them stored in a folder called public_html. So I set up a public_html in a users home folder (/home/char/public_html), and put a little test index.html in there, but when I try browsing to 127.0.0.1/~char, I get nothing. Well, I get an error saying the page doesn't exist.

Alright, and one last question, where does apache store web pages by default? In other words, where would I have to put web pages for them to be viewable? Somewhere in /var I assume? And how would I go about changing this?

I think depending on how you installed apache, it could be in /usr/local. Just do a find for the httpd.conf there should be one.


As for settingup per-user web directories, this should help.


http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/public_html.html

Alright, so I checked out /usr/local, and I tried to find httpd.conf:

Athena:/# cd /usr/local
Athena:/usr/local# ls
bin etc games include lib man sbin share src
Athena:/usr/local# find / -iname httpd.conf
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Athena:/usr/local#

so it would seem like the only copy around is the blank one in /etc/apache2. And thanks for the link, but when I tried adding "Userdir public_html" to httpd.conf and restarting apache, I get the error:

Invalid command 'UserDir', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

So I tried to include the module "mod_userdir.so" from /usr/lib/apache2/modules/, and now when trying to start Apache, I get the error:

Syntax error on line 1 of /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_userdir.so:
Invalid command '\x7fELF\x01\x01\x01', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
httpd not running, trying to start

Anyone have any ideas?

How did you install apache? just with apt-get?

Its strange that its empty, thats where your problem probably is is maybe it wasn't installed correctly. Either try and remove the package (if you use apt-get) and reinstall it. Or maybe compile and install from source.

During the install process for Debian it allows you to select from a number of diffrent groups of packages, one of which is "web server" (or something to that effect). I selected it there, so Apache was installed along with the rest of the system. So in that case, how would I go about uninstalling/reinstalling it?

apt-get remove apache

Ah ha! Got it working.

Turns out debian uses apache2.conf in place of httpd.conf (I'd like to know why, seems odd to just go against convention like that.). So I took the lines for the userdir stuff from the previously empty httpd.conf file, put them in the apache2.conf file... and same error. So I poked around a bit, and found two files of interest in /etc/apache2/mods-available/: userdir.conf, and userdir.load. So I changed the "Include /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_userdir.so" line to "Include /etc/apache2/mods-available/userdir.conf" and... pretty much the same error. So I tried "Include /etc/apache2/mods-available/userdir.load", and bam! Everything works.

So, looks like the only question left if where does Apache2 in Debian point to for it's default web hosting directory (can't seem to find any mention of any place in apache2.conf), and how does one go about changing it?

And thanks kcorupe for all your help so far.

EDIT: found the default directory, it's /var/www/apache2-default