ok after wasting my entire day trying to get the webserver on RHEL 5 to work. blurred vision from reading countless docs. an unrelenting headache due to countless failures of trying to get the sites to show up for the rest of the world. i am now desperatly seeking professional help from the members on the forum here. due to my high agitation level at the moment i would prefer not to copy/paste the diff. conf. files. i would rather just grant you access, let you do what you deem necessary, in order to get it to work. your help, in fixing this would be greatly appreciated.

So you're looking for someone to work for you for free??? Good luck. We're here to give folks a hand UP, not a hand OUT. Hate to put it like that, though, but seriously, you can't expect folks to be jumping at the chance to do your work for you, for free....

You can try typing in "yum install apache2", which should get your webserver installed and ready. Or you could call RedHat support, since you're paying for it with Enterprise Linux, and they could walk you through everything over the phone. But your requirements are pretty vague...'webserver' can mean LOTS. Do you need PHP? Javascript? Database access? What?? What web sites you're hosting will determine how much work is needed...

maybe i'm too irritated at the moment. you are correct. i do not expect anyone to work for free, i will compensate the person for the work. the only problem i have (i should have stated) is when i try to get some sites to show on the web, nothing works(websites). unless i am on the system that is hosting the sites then everything works, websites, and ping works(on those sites). any other computer in the world will get "cannot display the webpage", and they cant be pinged.
if i put the original http.conf file back, then i can see the default redhat page, from any computer in the world...using the ip. apache is installed. so its basically getting the names to resolve for the world to see them. dont need any other programs installed or setup, just need the apache to work. its probably something really stupid that i'm missing, but for the life of me i cant see it.

I think we've all been there where frustration leads to anger. However from a practical and security point of view I would strongly advise you to not allow people root account access for this (OK, there *are* ways but that would require additional setup and configuration).


Offering a reward is not the way we'd like to see things at LQ. If you find the help you receive here is outstanding you could consider a donation to LQ.


No DNS resolving the domainname to the server IP?

named is up and running, but like i said i cant see what it is, its probably something very minor that i am just overlooking. the nameservers are resolving to the proper ip.

Could it be that in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf you are denying access to all:
This gives you a "restrictive" system where you have to explicitly grant access to specific machines.

If you'd prefer a "permissive" system where you deny system abusers from getting to your websites, then you can change the "Order" to "deny,allow" where you have to explicitly deny access.

OTOH, you could simply do away with the ACLs and change the above to:

giving access to your site to the entire world.

If it has nothing to do with the ACLs, then I suggest you check the permissions for the folders containing your website. They have to be readable by user "apache" which is who Apache should be running as anyway!


Cheers,
tkb.

Also, if you need help with any Apache directive, simply load the site:

This will bring up the local Apache manual - really helpful!

Cheers,
tkb.