ALT Linux Apache 1.3 notes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Admin's
-------

It's not recommended to use /var/www/html directory as a content
holder for a production site due to these reasons [1]:

- during updates some content *may* (though shouldn't) get lost;
- it's a "default" site; best webmastering practices include
  setting up dedicated virtual hosts with ServerName and optionally
  ServerAlias records filled in accordingly to domain(s) served.

You may want to create /var/www/virtservers/domain.tld/html/ and
.../cgi-bin/ directories for each domain and store appropriate 
host configuration in /etc/httpd/conf/vhost.d/domain.tld.conf
(see the bottom section of httpd.conf for an include directive).

See also [2].


Running with a lot of open files may need /etc/security/limits.conf
tweaking; if the hard limit compiled into apache (1024) gets low
again please revisit [3].


Configuring mod_perl-ified apache is a bit tricky: we don't build
mod_perl as DSO due to memleaks under load (those who tried felt
back [4]).  Thus we build a separate apache binary with mod_perl
compiled in; to avoid module duplication and generally improve
the performance, we configure both httpds to run -DPERLPROXIED
so that the frontend (httpd) enables reverse proxy and backend
(httpd-perl) binds to 127.0.0.1:8200 not 0.0.0.0:80. [5]


Packager's
----------

Please read [6] for discussion regarding the need of httpd.conf
modification in %post/%postun.


Developer's
-----------

There were some discussions of web packaging policy in devel@
and sisyphus@; I know there was some progress in Debian and
especially Gentoo.  Recently I've come to think that either
a clone or a generalization of update_chrooted can help us.

Things should google up as "webapp policy".


References
----------

[1] https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3715
[2] https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5634
[3] https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5748
[4] https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5263
[5] https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4994
[6] https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735

-- 
Michael Shigorin <mike@altlinux.org>
