Hello,

I want to run an HTTP server on my machine (Suse 9.3) in order to do some experiments with my website (needs PHP and MySQL). I thought that the easiest way to set up the server would be using YAST, but I can't get past the first step of the configuration dialog where I should select a network device because the list of interfaces to listen on is empty.

I'm connecting to the internet with device 'dsl0', so I would expect this one to appear in the interface list. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I tried to configure Apache2 manually using the configuration files and the test website coming with Apache works fine, but I failed to configure a virtual host thus far and would prefer the easy way using YAST.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You might want to give Webmin a try it's a much more robust tool for setting up an Apache server, it also (if my memory serves correctly) ether doesn't require you to choose a device, or will let you manually enter one, so you can use dsl0 or even the loopback device. Webmin is no replacement for a good solid knowledge of Apache but it's much better than YaST.

Oh, I don't aim to actually run my website on my computer, I just want to do some tests locally, therefore it doesn't matter if I do some things wrong which might matter on a "public" web server.

Thanks a lot for your answer, I'll give webmin a try.

Basically webmin works fine, but I'm still having the problem that I get a 403 error if I don't put my htms in /srv/www/ but somewhere in my home directory - although I just copied the files from /srv/www and added the respective directory to the list. Any idea?

Could this be due to the fact that I'm using encrypted home directories? I thought that there was no difference to non-encrypted home directories once they are mounted. I even set up a virtual server by copying and pasting the directives of the (working) default server (and adapting the paths to the directory I chose), and I still get a 403 error (You don't have permission to access /index.html on this server.). Using an encrypted directory other than my home directory doesn't work as well , but it works if I put it in /tmp.

Edit: I put that problem into its appropriate section here.

the encrypted file system I would suspect will lock it out since when you access a web page apache reads it as user http/web/www and therefor does not have access (I could be wrong on this). the same also goes for file/folder permisions any file (.html, .jpg, .png etc.) you want to be accessible through a web site you should set with read permissions for everyone and on folders any folder you want to be accessible though your server you will need to set with executable permission bit. The best setup for folders would be a 711 so that you can read/write/modify everything in the folder but everyone will only be able to read files in the folder not actually browse the folder, that way users that access you web site can't hit their up arrow to browse you folders.