This directive controls whether requests that contain trailing pathname information that follows an actual filename (or non-existent file in an existing directory) will be accepted or rejected. The trailing pathname information can be made available to scripts in the PATH_INFO environment variable.

For example, assume the location /test/ points to a directory that contains only the single file here.html. Then requests for /test/here.html/more and /test/nothere.html/more both collect /more as PATH_INFO.

The three possible arguments for the AcceptPathInfo directive are:

off

A request will only be accepted if it maps to a literal path that exists. Therefore a request with trailing pathname information after the true filename such as /test/here.html/more in the above example will return a 404 NOT FOUND error.

on

A request will be accepted if a leading path component maps to a file that exists. The above example /test/here.html/more will be accepted if /test/here.html maps to a valid file.

default

The treatment of requests with trailing pathname information is determined by the handler responsible for the request. The core handler for normal files defaults to rejecting PATH_INFO. Handlers that serve scripts, such as cgi-script and isapi-isa, generally accept PATH_INFO by default.

The primary purpose of the AcceptPathInfo directive is to allow you to override the handler's choice of accepting or rejecting PATH_INFO. This override is required, for example, when you use a filter, such as INCLUDES, to generate content based on PATH_INFO. The core handler would usually reject the request, so you can use the following configuration to enable such a script:

When returning a document to the client the server looks for the first existing access control file from this list of names in every directory of the path to the document, if access control files are enabled for that directory. For example:

before returning the document /usr/local/web/index.html, the server will read /.acl, /usr/.acl, /usr/local/.acl and /usr/local/web/.acl for directives, unless they have been disabled with

This directive specifies the name of the character set that will be added to any response that does not have any parameter on the content type in the HTTP headers. This will override any character set specified in the body of the document via a META tag. A setting of AddDefaultCharset Off disables this functionality. AddDefaultCharset On enables Apache's internal default charset of iso-8859-1 as required by the directive. You can also specify an alternate charset to be used. For example:

The server can have modules compiled in which are not actively in use. This directive can be used to enable the use of those modules. The server comes with a pre-loaded list of active modules; this list can be cleared with the ClearModuleList directive.

For example:

When the server finds an .htaccess file (as specified by AccessFileName) it needs to know which directives declared in that file can override earlier access information.

When this directive is set to None, then .htaccess files are completely ignored. In this case, the server will not even attempt to read .htaccess files in the filesystem.

When this directive is set to All, then any directive which has the .htaccess Context is allowed in .htaccess files.

The directive-type can be one of the following groupings of directives.

AuthConfig

Allow use of the authorization directives (AuthDBMGroupFile, AuthDBMUserFile, AuthGroupFile, AuthName, AuthType, AuthUserFile, Require, etc.).

FileInfo

Allow use of the directives controlling document types (DefaultType, ErrorDocument, ForceType, LanguagePriority, SetHandler, SetInputFilter, SetOutputFilter, and mod_mime Add* and Remove* directives, etc.).

Indexes

Allow use of the directives controlling directory indexing (AddDescription, AddIcon, AddIconByEncoding, AddIconByType, DefaultIcon, DirectoryIndex, FancyIndexing, HeaderName, IndexIgnore, IndexOptions, ReadmeName, etc.).

Limit

Allow use of the directives controlling host access (Allow, Deny and Order).

Options

Allow use of the directives controlling specific directory features (Options and XBitHack).

Example:

This directive sets the name of the authorization realm for a directory. This realm is given to the client so that the user knows which username and password to send. AuthName takes a single argument; if the realm name contains spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. It must be accompanied by AuthType and Require directives, and directives such as AuthUserFile and AuthGroupFile to work.

For example:

The string provided for the AuthRealm is what will appear in the password dialog provided by most browsers.

This directive selects the type of user authentication for a directory. Only Basic and Digest are currently implemented. It must be accompanied by AuthName and Require directives, and directives such as AuthUserFile and AuthGroupFile to work.

This directive enables the generation of Content-MD5 headers as defined in RFC1864 respectively RFC2068.

MD5 is an algorithm for computing a "message digest" (sometimes called "fingerprint") of arbitrary-length data, with a high degree of confidence that any alterations in the data will be reflected in alterations in the message digest.

The Content-MD5 header provides an end-to-end message integrity check (MIC) of the entity-body. A proxy or client may check this header for detecting accidental modification of the entity-body in transit. Example header:

Note that this can cause performance problems on your server since the message digest is computed on every request (the values are not cached).

Content-MD5 is only sent for documents served by the core, and not by any module. For example, SSI documents, output from CGI scripts, and byte range responses do not have this header.

There will be times when the server is asked to provide a document whose type cannot be determined by its MIME types mappings.

The server must inform the client of the content-type of the document, so in the event of an unknown type it uses the DefaultType. For example:

would be appropriate for a directory which contained many gif images with filenames missing the .gif extension.

Note that unlike ForceType, this directive is only provides the default mime-type. All other mime-type definitions, including filename extensions, that might identify the media type will override this default.

Directory and </Directory> are used to enclose a group of directives which will apply only to the named directory and sub-directories of that directory. Any directive which is allowed in a directory context may be used. Directory-path is either the full path to a directory, or a wild-card string. In a wild-card string, `?' matches any single character, and `*' matches any sequences of characters. You may also use `[]' character ranges like in the shell. Also as of Apache 1.3 none of the wildcards match a `/' character, which more closely mimics the behavior of Unix shells. Example:

Extended regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

would match directories in /www/ that consisted of three numbers.

If multiple (non-regular expression) directory sections match the directory (or its parents) containing a document, then the directives are applied in the order of shortest match first, interspersed with the directives from the .htaccess files. For example, with

for access to the document /home/web/dir/doc.html the steps are:

• Apply directive AllowOverride None (disabling .htaccess files).
• Apply directive AllowOverride FileInfo (for directory /home/web).
• Apply any FileInfo directives in /home/web/.htaccess

Regular expressions are not considered until after all of the normal sections have been applied. Then all of the regular expressions are tested in the order they appeared in the configuration file. For example, with

The regular expression section won't be considered until after all normal <Directory>s and .htaccess files have been applied. Then the regular expression will match on /home/abc/public_html/abc and be applied.

Note that the default Apache access for <Directory /> is Allow from All. This means that Apache will serve any file mapped from an URL. It is recommended that you change this with a block such as

and then override this for directories you want accessible. See the Security Tips page for more details.

The directory sections typically occur in the access.conf file, but they may appear in any configuration file. Directory directives cannot nest, and cannot appear in a Limit or LimitExcept section.

DirectoryMatch and </DirectoryMatch> are used to enclose a group of directives which will apply only to the named directory and sub-directories of that directory, the same as Directory. However, it takes as an argument a regular expression. For example:

would match directories in /www/ that consisted of three numbers.

This directive sets the directory from which httpd will serve files. Unless matched by a directive like Alias, the server appends the path from the requested URL to the document root to make the path to the document. Example:

then an access to http://www.my.host.com/index.html refers to /usr/web/index.html.

The DocumentRoot should be specified without a trailing slash.

In the event of a problem or error, Apache can be configured to do one of four things,

1. output a simple hardcoded error message
2. output a customized message
3. redirect to a local URL-path to handle the problem/error
4. redirect to an external URL to handle the problem/error

The first option is the default, while options 2-4 are configured using the ErrorDocument directive, which is followed by the HTTP response code and a URL or a message. Apache will sometimes offer additional information regarding the problem/error.

URLs can begin with a slash (/) for local URLs, or be a full URL which the client can resolve. Alternatively, a message can be provided to be displayed by the browser. Examples:

Note that when you specify an ErrorDocument that points to a remote URL (ie. anything with a method such as "http" in front of it), Apache will send a redirect to the client to tell it where to find the document, even if the document ends up being on the same server. This has several implications, the most important being that the client will not receive the original error status code, but instead will receive a redirect status code. This in turn can confuse web robots and other clients which try to determine if a URL is valid using the status code. In addition, if you use a remote URL in an ErrorDocument 401, the client will not know to prompt the user for a password since it will not receive the 401 status code. Therefore, if you use an "ErrorDocument 401" directive then it must refer to a local document.

Prior to version 2.0, messages were indicated by prefixing them with a single unmatched double quote character.

The ErrorLog directive sets the name of the file to which the server will log any errors it encounters. If the file-path does not begin with a slash (/) then it is assumed to be relative to the ServerRoot. If the file-path begins with a pipe (|) then it is assumed to be a command to spawn to handle the error log.

Using syslog instead of a filename enables logging via syslogd(8) if the system supports it. The default is to use syslog facility local7, but you can override this by using the syslog:facility syntax where facility can be one of the names usually documented in syslog(1).

SECURITY: See the security tips document for details on why your security could be compromised if the directory where logfiles are stored is writable by anyone other than the user that starts the server.

The FileETag directive configures the file attributes that are used to create the ETag (entity tag) response header field when the document is based on a file. (The ETag value is used in cache management to save network bandwidth.) In Apache 1.3.22 and earlier, the ETag value was always formed from the file's inode, size, and last-modified time (mtime). The FileETag directive allows you to choose which of these -- if any -- should be used. The recognized keywords are:

INode

The file's i-node number will be included in the calculation

MTime

The date and time the file was last modified will be included

Size

The number of bytes in the file will be included

All

All available fields will be used (equivalent to 'FileETag INode MTime Size')

None

If a document is file-based, no ETag field will be included in the response

The INode, MTime, and Size keywords may be prefixed with either '+' or '-', which allow changes to be made to the default setting inherited from a broader scope. Any keyword appearing without such a prefix immediately and completely cancels the inherited setting.

If a directory's configuration includes 'FileETag INode MTime Size', and a subdirectory's includes 'FileETag -INode', the setting for that subdirectory (which will be inherited by any sub-subdirectories that don't override it) will be equivalent to 'FileETag MTime Size'.

The Files directive provides for access control by filename. It is comparable to the Directory directive and Location directives. It should be matched with a </Files> directive. The directives given within this section will be applied to any object with a basename (last component of filename) matching the specified filename. Files sections are processed in the order they appear in the configuration file, after the Directory sections and .htaccess files are read, but before Location sections. Note that Files can be nested inside Directory sections to restrict the portion of the filesystem they apply to.

The filename argument should include a filename, or a wild-card string, where `?' matches any single character, and `*' matches any sequences of characters. Extended regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

would match most common Internet graphics formats. In Apache 1.3 and later, FilesMatch is preferred, however.

Note that unlike Directory and Location sections, Files sections can be used inside .htaccess files. This allows users to control access to their own files, at a file-by-file level.

The FilesMatch directive provides for access control by filename, just as the Files directive does. However, it accepts a regular expression. For example:

would match most common Internet graphics formats.

When placed into an .htaccess file or a Directory, or Location or Files section, this directive forces all matching files to be served with the content type identification given by mime-type. For example, if you had a directory full of GIF files, but did not want to label them all with ".gif", you might want to use:

Note that unlike DefaultType, this directive overrides all mime-type associations, including filename extensions, that might identify the media type.

This directive enables DNS lookups so that host names can be logged (and passed to CGIs/SSIs in REMOTE_HOST). The value double refers to doing double-reverse DNS. That is, after a reverse lookup is performed, a forward lookup is then performed on that result. At least one of the ip addresses in the forward lookup must match the original address. (In "tcpwrappers" terminology this is called PARANOID.)

Regardless of the setting, when mod_access is used for controlling access by hostname, a double reverse lookup will be performed. This is necessary for security. Note that the result of this double-reverse isn't generally available unless you set HostnameLookups double. For example, if only HostnameLookups on and a request is made to an object that is protected by hostname restrictions, regardless of whether the double-reverse fails or not, CGIs will still be passed the single-reverse result in REMOTE_HOST.

The default is off in order to save the network traffic for those sites that don't truly need the reverse lookups done. It is also better for the end users because they don't have to suffer the extra latency that a lookup entails. Heavily loaded sites should leave this directive off, since DNS lookups can take considerable amounts of time. The utility logresolve, provided in the /support directory, can be used to look up host names from logged IP addresses offline.

This directive enables RFC1413-compliant logging of the remote user name for each connection, where the client machine runs identd or something similar. This information is logged in the access log.

The information should not be trusted in any way except for rudimentary usage tracking.

Note that this can cause serious latency problems accessing your server since every request requires one of these lookups to be performed. When firewalls are involved each lookup might possibly fail and add 30 seconds of latency to each hit. So in general this is not very useful on public servers accessible from the Internet.

The <IfDefine test>...</IfDefine> section is used to mark directives that are conditional. The directives within an IfDefine section are only processed if the test is true. If test is false, everything between the start and end markers is ignored.

The test in the IfDefine section directive can be one of two forms:

• parameter-name
• !parameter-name

In the former case, the directives between the start and end markers are only processed if the parameter named parameter-name is defined. The second format reverses the test, and only processes the directives if parameter-name is not defined.

The parameter-name argument is a define as given on the httpd command line via -Dparameter-, at the time the server was started.

IfDefine sections are nest-able, which can be used to implement simple multiple-parameter tests. Example:

  $ httpd -DReverseProxy ...

  # httpd.conf
  <IfDefine ReverseProxy>
  LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
  LoadModule proxy_module   modules/libproxy.so
  </IfDefine>

The <IfModule test>...</IfModule> section is used to mark directives that are conditional. The directives within an IfModule section are only processed if the test is true. If test is false, everything between the start and end markers is ignored.

The test in the IfModule section directive can be one of two forms:

• module name
• !module name

In the former case, the directives between the start and end markers are only processed if the module named module name is included in Apache -- either compiled in or dynamically loaded using LoadModule. The second format reverses the test, and only processes the directives if module name is not included.

The module name argument is the file name of the module, at the time it was compiled. For example, mod_rewrite.c.

IfModule sections are nest-able, which can be used to implement simple multiple-module tests.

This directive allows inclusion of other configuration files from within the server configuration files.

If Include points to a directory, rather than a file, Apache will read all files in that directory, and any subdirectory, and parse those as configuration files.

The file path specified may be a fully qualified path (i.e. starting with a slash), or may be relative to the ServerRoot directory.

Examples:

Or, providing paths relative to your ServerRoot directory:

Make sure that an included directory does not contain any stray files, such as editor temporary files, for example, as Apache will attempt to read them in and use the contents as configuration directives, which may cause the server to fail on start up. Running apachectl configtest will give you a list of the files that are being processed during the configuration check:

 root@host# apachectl configtest
  Processing config directory: /usr/local/apache/conf/vhosts
  Processing config file: /usr/local/apache/conf/vhosts/vhost1
  Processing config file: /usr/local/apache/conf/vhosts/vhost2
 Syntax OK

This will help in verifying that you are getting only the files that you intended as part of your configuration.

The Keep-Alive extension to HTTP/1.0 and the persistent connection feature of HTTP/1.1 provide long-lived HTTP sessions which allow multiple requests to be sent over the same TCP connection. In some cases this has been shown to result in an almost 50% speedup in latency times for HTML documents with many images. To enable Keep-Alive connections in Apache 1.2 and later, set KeepAlive On.

For HTTP/1.0 clients, Keep-Alive connections will only be used if they are specifically requested by a client. In addition, a Keep-Alive connection with an HTTP/1.0 client can only be used when the length of the content is known in advance. This implies that dynamic content such as CGI output, SSI pages, and server-generated directory listings will generally not use Keep-Alive connections to HTTP/1.0 clients. For HTTP/1.1 clients, persistent connections are the default unless otherwise specified. If the client requests it, chunked encoding will be used in order to send content of unknown length over persistent connections.

The number of seconds Apache will wait for a subsequent request before closing the connection. Once a request has been received, the timeout value specified by the Timeout directive applies.

Setting KeepAliveTimeout to a high value may cause performance problems in heavily loaded servers. The higher the timeout, the more server processes will be kept occupied waiting on connections with idle clients.

Access controls are normally effective for all access methods, and this is the usual desired behavior. In the general case, access control directives should not be placed within a limit section.

The purpose of the Limit directive is to restrict the effect of the access controls to the nominated HTTP methods. For all other methods, the access restrictions that are enclosed in the <Limit> bracket will have no effect. The following example applies the access control only to the methods POST, PUT, and DELETE, leaving all other methods unprotected:

The method names listed can be one or more of: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, CONNECT, OPTIONS, TRACE, PATCH, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, MKCOL, COPY, MOVE, LOCK, and UNLOCK. The method name is case-sensitive. If GET is used it will also restrict HEAD requests.

LimitExcept and </LimitExcept> are used to enclose a group of access control directives which will then apply to any HTTP access method not listed in the arguments; i.e., it is the opposite of a Limit section and can be used to control both standard and nonstandard/unrecognized methods. See the documentation for Limit for more details.

For example:

This directive specifies the number of bytes from 0 (meaning unlimited) to 2147483647 (2GB) that are allowed in a request body. The default value is defined by the compile-time constant DEFAULT_LIMIT_REQUEST_BODY (0 as distributed).

The LimitRequestBody directive allows the user to set a limit on the allowed size of an HTTP request message body within the context in which the directive is given (server, per-directory, per-file or per-location). If the client request exceeds that limit, the server will return an error response instead of servicing the request. The size of a normal request message body will vary greatly depending on the nature of the resource and the methods allowed on that resource. CGI scripts typically use the message body for passing form information to the server. Implementations of the PUT method will require a value at least as large as any representation that the server wishes to accept for that resource.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks.

If, for example, you are permitting file upload to a particular location, and wich to limit the size of the uploaded file to 100K, you might use the following directive:

Number is an integer from 0 (meaning unlimited) to 32767. The default value is defined by the compile-time constant DEFAULT_LIMIT_REQUEST_FIELDS (100 as distributed).

The LimitRequestFields directive allows the server administrator to modify the limit on the number of request header fields allowed in an HTTP request. A server needs this value to be larger than the number of fields that a normal client request might include. The number of request header fields used by a client rarely exceeds 20, but this may vary among different client implementations, often depending upon the extent to which a user has configured their browser to support detailed content negotiation. Optional HTTP extensions are often expressed using request header fields.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks. The value should be increased if normal clients see an error response from the server that indicates too many fields were sent in the request.

For example:

This directive specifies the number of bytes from 0 to the value of the compile-time constant DEFAULT_LIMIT_REQUEST_FIELDSIZE (8190 as distributed) that will be allowed in an HTTP request header.

The LimitRequestFieldsize directive allows the server administrator to reduce the limit on the allowed size of an HTTP request header field below the normal input buffer size compiled with the server. A server needs this value to be large enough to hold any one header field from a normal client request. The size of a normal request header field will vary greatly among different client implementations, often depending upon the extent to which a user has configured their browser to support detailed content negotiation.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks.

For example:

This directive sets the number of bytes from 0 to the value of the compile-time constant DEFAULT_LIMIT_REQUEST_LINE (8190 as distributed) that will be allowed on the HTTP request-line.

The LimitRequestLine directive allows the server administrator to reduce the limit on the allowed size of a client's HTTP request-line below the normal input buffer size compiled with the server. Since the request-line consists of the HTTP method, URI, and protocol version, the LimitRequestLine directive places a restriction on the length of a request-URI allowed for a request on the server. A server needs this value to be large enough to hold any of its resource names, including any information that might be passed in the query part of a GET request.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks.

For example:

Limit (in bytes) on maximum size of an XML-based request body. A value of 0 will disable any checking.

Example:

The Location directive provides for access control by URL. It is similar to the Directory directive, and starts a subsection which is terminated with a </Location> directive. Location sections are processed in the order they appear in the configuration file, after the Directory sections and .htaccess files are read, and after the Files sections.

Note that URLs do not have to line up with the filesystem at all, it should be emphasized that <Location> operates completely outside the filesystem.

For all origin (non-proxy) requests, the URL to be matched is of the form /path/, and you should not include any http://servername prefix. For proxy requests, the URL to be matched is of the form scheme://servername/path, and you must include the prefix.

The URL may use wildcards In a wild-card string, `?' matches any single character, and `*' matches any sequences of characters.

Extended regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

would match URLs that contained the substring "/extra/data" or "/special/data". In Apache 1.3 and above, a new directive LocationMatch exists which behaves identical to the regex version of Location.

The Location functionality is especially useful when combined with the SetHandler directive. For example, to enable status requests, but allow them only from browsers at foo.com, you might use:

The LocationMatch directive provides for access control by URL, in an identical manner to Location. However, it takes a regular expression as an argument instead of a simple string. For example:

would match URLs that contained the substring "/extra/data" or "/special/data".

LogLevel adjusts the verbosity of the messages recorded in the error logs (see ErrorLog directive). The following levels are available, in order of decreasing significance:

When a particular level is specified, messages from all other levels of higher significance will be reported as well. E.g., when LogLevel info is specified, then messages with log levels of notice and warn will also be posted.

Using a level of at least crit is recommended.

For example:

The MaxKeepAliveRequests directive limits the number of requests allowed per connection when KeepAlive is on. If it is set to "0", unlimited requests will be allowed. We recommend that this setting be kept to a high value for maximum server performance.

For example:

The NameVirtualHost directive is a required directive if you want to configure name-based virtual hosts.

Although addr can be hostname it is recommended that you always use an IP address, e.g.

With the NameVirtualHost directive you specify the IP address on which the server will receive requests for the name-based virtual hosts. This will usually be the address to which your name-based virtual host names resolve. In cases where a firewall or other proxy receives the requests and forwards them on a different IP address to the server, you must specify the IP address of the physical interface on the machine which will be servicing the requests. If you have multiple name-based hosts on multiple addresses, repeat the directive for each address.

Note: the "main server" and any _default_ servers will never be served for a request to a NameVirtualHost IP Address (unless for some reason you specify NameVirtualHost but then don't define any VirtualHosts for that address).

Optionally you can specify a port number on which the name-based virtual hosts should be used, e.g.

IPv6 addresses must be enclosed in square brackets, as shown in the following example:

The Options directive controls which server features are available in a particular directory.

option can be set to None, in which case none of the extra features are enabled, or one or more of the following:

All

All options except for MultiViews. This is the default setting.

ExecCGI

Execution of CGI scripts is permitted.

FollowSymLinks

The server will follow symbolic links in this directory.
Note: even though the server follows the symlink it does not change the pathname used to match against Directory sections.
Note: this option gets ignored if set inside a Location section.

Includes

Server-side includes are permitted.

IncludesNOEXEC

Server-side includes are permitted, but the #exec command and #exec CGI are disabled. It is still possible to #include virtual CGI scripts from ScriptAliase'd directories.

Indexes

If a URL which maps to a directory is requested, and the there is no DirectoryIndex (e.g., index.html) in that directory, then the server will return a formatted listing of the directory.

MultiViews

Content negotiated MultiViews are allowed.

SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

The server will only follow symbolic links for which the target file or directory is owned by the same user id as the link.
Note: this option gets ignored if set inside a Location section.

Normally, if multiple Options could apply to a directory, then the most specific one is taken complete; the options are not merged. However if all the options on the Options directive are preceded by a + or - symbol, the options are merged. Any options preceded by a + are added to the options currently in force, and any options preceded by a - are removed from the options currently in force.

For example, without any + and - symbols:

then only Includes will be set for the /web/docs/spec directory. However if the second Options directive uses the + and - symbols:

then the options FollowSymLinks and Includes are set for the /web/docs/spec directory.

Note: Using -IncludesNOEXEC or -Includes disables server-side includes completely regardless of the previous setting.

The default in the absence of any other settings is All.

This directive selects which authenticated users can access a directory. The allowed syntaxes are:

• Require user userid [userid] ...

  Only the named users can access the directory.

• Require group group-name [group-name] ...

  Only users in the named groups can access the directory.

• Require valid-user

  All valid users can access the directory.

Require must be accompanied by AuthName and AuthType directives, and directives such as AuthUserFile and AuthGroupFile (to define users and groups) in order to work correctly. Example:

Access controls which are applied in this way are effective for all methods. This is what is normally desired. If you wish to apply access controls only to specific methods, while leaving other methods unprotected, then place the Require statement into a Limit section.

Takes 1 or 2 parameters. The first parameter sets the soft resource limit for all processes and the second parameter sets the maximum resource limit. Either parameter can be a number, or max to indicate to the server that the limit should be set to the maximum allowed by the operating system configuration. Raising the maximum resource limit requires that the server is running as root, or in the initial startup phase.

This applies to processes forked off from Apache children servicing requests, not the Apache children themselves. This includes CGI scripts and SSI exec commands, but not any processes forked off from the Apache parent such as piped logs.

CPU resource limits are expressed in seconds per process.

Takes 1 or 2 parameters. The first parameter sets the soft resource limit for all processes and the second parameter sets the maximum resource limit. Either parameter can be a number, or max to indicate to the server that the limit should be set to the maximum allowed by the operating system configuration. Raising the maximum resource limit requires that the server is running as root, or in the initial startup phase.

This applies to processes forked off from Apache children servicing requests, not the Apache children themselves. This includes CGI scripts and SSI exec commands, but not any processes forked off from the Apache parent such as piped logs.

Memory resource limits are expressed in bytes per process.

Takes 1 or 2 parameters. The first parameter sets the soft resource limit for all processes and the second parameter sets the maximum resource limit. Either parameter can be a number, or max to indicate to the server that the limit should be set to the maximum allowed by the operating system configuration. Raising the maximum resource limit requires that the server is running as root, or in the initial startup phase.

This applies to processes forked off from Apache children servicing requests, not the Apache children themselves. This includes CGI scripts and SSI exec commands, but not any processes forked off from the Apache parent such as piped logs.

Process limits control the number of processes per user.

Note: If CGI processes are not running under userids other than the web server userid, this directive will limit the number of processes that the server itself can create. Evidence of this situation will be indicated by cannot fork messages in the error_log.

Access policy if both Allow and Require used. The parameter can be either 'all' or 'any'. This directive is only useful if access to a particular area is being restricted by both username/password and client host address. In this case the default behavior ("all") is to require that the client passes the address access restriction and enters a valid username and password. With the "any" option the client will be granted access if they either pass the host restriction or enter a valid username and password. This can be used to password restrict an area, but to let clients from particular addresses in without prompting for a password.

For example, if you wanted to let people on your network have unrestricted access to a portion of your website, but require that people outside of your network provide a password, you could use a configuration similar to the following:

This directive is used to control how Apache finds the interpreter used to run CGI scripts. The default technique is to use the interpreter pointed to by the #! line in the script. Setting ScriptInterpreterSource registry will cause the Windows Registry to be searched using the script file extension (e.g., .pl) as a search key.

The ServerAdmin sets the e-mail address that the server includes in any error messages it returns to the client.

It may be worth setting up a dedicated address for this, e.g.

as users do not always mention that they are talking about the server!

The ServerAlias directive sets the alternate names for a host, for use with name-based virtual hosts.

The ServerName directive sets the hostname and port that the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating redirection URLs. For example, if the name of the machine hosting the webserver is simple.example.com, but the machine also has the DNS alias www.example.com and you wish the webserver to be so identified, the following directive should be used:

If no ServerName is specified, then the server attempts to deduce the hostname by performing a reverse lookup on the IP address. If no port is specified in the servername, then the server will use the port from the incoming request. For optimal reliability and predictability, you should specify an explicit hostname and port using the ServerName directive.

If you are using name-based virtual hosts, the ServerName inside a VirtualHost section specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to match this virtual host.

See the description of the UseCanonicalName directive for settings which determine whether self-referential URL's (e.g., by the mod_dir module) will refer to the specified port, or to the port number given in the client's request.

The ServerPath directive sets the legacy URL pathname for a host, for use with name-based virtual hosts.

The ServerRoot directive sets the directory in which the server lives. Typically it will contain the subdirectories conf/ and logs/. Relative paths for other configuration files are taken as relative to this directory.

The ServerSignature directive allows the configuration of a trailing footer line under server-generated documents (error messages, mod_proxy ftp directory listings, mod_info output, ...). The reason why you would want to enable such a footer line is that in a chain of proxies, the user often has no possibility to tell which of the chained servers actually produced a returned error message.
The Off setting, which is the default, suppresses the error line (and is therefore compatible with the behavior of Apache-1.2 and below). The On setting simply adds a line with the server version number and ServerName of the serving virtual host, and the EMail setting additionally creates a "mailto:" reference to the ServerAdmin of the referenced document.

This directive controls whether Server response header field which is sent back to clients includes a description of the generic OS-type of the server as well as information about compiled-in modules.

ServerTokens Prod[uctOnly]

Server sends (e.g.): Server: Apache

ServerTokens Min[imal]

Server sends (e.g.): Server: Apache/1.3.0

ServerTokens OS

Server sends (e.g.): Server: Apache/1.3.0 (Unix)

ServerTokens Full (or not specified)

Server sends (e.g.): Server: Apache/1.3.0 (Unix) PHP/3.0 MyMod/1.2

This setting applies to the entire server, and cannot be enabled or disabled on a virtualhost-by-virtualhost basis.

When placed into an .htaccess file or a Directory or Location section, this directive forces all matching files to be parsed through the handler given by handler-name. For example, if you had a directory you wanted to be parsed entirely as imagemap rule files, regardless of extension, you might put the following into an .htaccess file in that directory:

Another example: if you wanted to have the server display a status report whenever a URL of http://servername/status was called, you might put the following into httpd.conf:

The SetInputFilter directive sets the filter or filters which will process client requests and POST input when they are received by the server. This is in addition to any filters defined elsewhere, including the AddInputFilter directive.

If more than one filter is specified, they must be separated by semicolons in the order in which they should process the content.

The SetOutputFilter directive sets the filters which will process responses from the server before they are sent to the client. This is in addition to any filters defined elsewhere, including the AddOutputFilter directive.

For example, the following configuration will process all files in the /www/data/ directory for server-side includes.

If more than one filter is specified, they must be separated by semicolons in the order in which they should process the content.

The TimeOut directive currently defines the amount of time Apache will wait for three things:

1. The total amount of time it takes to receive a GET request.
2. The amount of time between receipt of TCP packets on a POST or PUT request.
3. The amount of time between ACKs on transmissions of TCP packets in responses.

We plan on making these separately configurable at some point down the road. The timer used to default to 1200 before 1.2, but has been lowered to 300 which is still far more than necessary in most situations. It is not set any lower by default because there may still be odd places in the code where the timer is not reset when a packet is sent.

In many situations Apache has to construct a self-referential URL. That is, a URL which refers back to the same server. With UseCanonicalName on Apache will use the hostname and port specified in the ServerName directive to construct a canonical name for the server. This name is used in all self-referential URLs, and for the values of SERVER_NAME and SERVER_PORT in CGIs.

With UseCanonicalName off Apache will form self-referential URLs using the hostname and port supplied by the client if any are supplied (otherwise it will use the canonical name). These values are the same that are used to implement name based virtual hosts, and are available with the same clients. The CGI variables SERVER_NAME and SERVER_PORT will be constructed from the client supplied values as well.

An example where this may be useful is on an intranet server where you have users connecting to the machine using short names such as www. You'll notice that if the users type a shortname, and a URL which is a directory, such as http://www/splat, without the trailing slash then Apache will redirect them to http://www.domain.com/splat/. If you have authentication enabled, this will cause the user to have to reauthenticate twice (once for www and once again for www.domain.com). But if UseCanonicalName is set off, then Apache will redirect to http://www/splat/.

There is a third option, UseCanonicalName DNS, which is intended for use with mass IP-based virtual hosting to support ancient clients that do not provide a Host: header. With this option Apache does a reverse DNS lookup on the server IP address that the client connected to in order to work out self-referential URLs.

Warning: if CGIs make assumptions about the values of SERVER_NAME they may be broken by this option. The client is essentially free to give whatever value they want as a hostname. But if the CGI is only using SERVER_NAME to construct self-referential URLs then it should be just fine.

VirtualHost and </VirtualHost> are used to enclose a group of directives which will apply only to a particular virtual host. Any directive which is allowed in a virtual host context may be used. When the server receives a request for a document on a particular virtual host, it uses the configuration directives enclosed in the VirtualHost section. Addr can be

• The IP address of the virtual host
• A fully qualified domain name for the IP address of the virtual host.

IPv6 addresses must be specified in square brackets because the optional port number could not be determined otherwise. An IPv6 example is shown below:

Each Virtual Host must correspond to a different IP address, different port number or a different host name for the server, in the former case the server machine must be configured to accept IP packets for multiple addresses. (If the machine does not have multiple network interfaces, then this can be accomplished with the ifconfig alias command (if your OS supports it), or with kernel patches like VIF (for SunOS(TM) 4.1.x)).

The special name _default_ can be specified in which case this virtual host will match any IP address that is not explicitly listed in another virtual host. In the absence of any _default_ virtual host the "main" server config, consisting of all those definitions outside any VirtualHost section, is used when no match occurs.

You can specify a :port to change the port that is matched. If unspecified then it defaults to the same port as the most recent Listen statement of the main server. You may also specify :* to match all ports on that address. (This is recommended when used with _default_.)

SECURITY: See the security tips document for details on why your security could be compromised if the directory where logfiles are stored is writable by anyone other than the user that starts the server.

NOTE: The use of VirtualHost does not affect what addresses Apache listens on. You may need to ensure that Apache is listening on the correct addresses using Listen.