LinuxQuestions.org - unable to view documents from my apache server

Hi all,

I'm working through the O'Reilly Apache book and am having a hard time getting things to run correctly on my desktop system. I have set up Apache on my laptop and it is running great there, and I'm not sure what the difference is between the 2 versions.

I fire up httpd and then go to http: //localhost in my web browser. Instead of getting a generated list of files in the htdocs directory on my webserver (this is what happens on my laptop), I get the message "The requested URL / was not found on this server."

If I go directly to a document that I know exists in my htdocs directory (1.html, for example), by typing http: //localhost/1.html into my web browser, I get a pop-up dialog asking me where I want to download this file to, instead of it being rendered in my web browser window.

What have I done to have these things happen? Did I misconfigure the server when I compiled it, or is there something in my config file that's screwing this up? I put a directive to set up my mime types (TypesConfig conf/mime.types) in my config file, but when I try to start httpd with that directive in my config, I get the error:

Syntax error on line 16 of /apache/APACHE3/site.simple/conf/httpd.conf:
Invalid command 'TypesConfig', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

The O'Reilly books says this ought to work for the mime type configuration, but it's not doing much for me. My Apache server on my laptop runs fine w/o this directive anyway, so I'm not sure what's going on.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!