Chapter 14. Apache HTTP Server

193

14.5.19.

Group

The

Group

directive is similar to the

User

. The

Group

sets the group under which the server will

answer requests. The default

Group

is

apache

.

14.5.20.

ServerAdmin

ServerAdmin

should be the email address of the Web server's administrator. This email address will

show up in error messages on server generated webpages, so users can report a problem by sending

email to the server administrator.

ServerAdmin

is set by default to

root@localhost

.

Typically, a good way to set up

ServerAdmin

is to set it to

webmaster@your_domain.com

. Then

alias

webmaster

to the person responsible for the Web server in

/etc/aliases

. Finally, run

/usr/bin/newaliases

to add the new alias.

14.5.21.

ServerName

Use

ServerName

to set a hostname and port number (matching the

Listen

directive) for the server.

The ServerName does not need to match the machine's actual hostname. For example, you might want

to use www.your_domain.com when your server's real name is actually foo.your_domain.com. Note

that the

ServerName

must be a valid Domain Name Service (DNS) name that you have the right to

use   do not just make something up. For example:

ServerName www.your_domain.com:80

If you do specify a

ServerName

, be sure its IP address and server name pair are included in your

/etc/hosts

file.

14.5.22.

DocumentRoot

The

DocumentRoot

is the directory which contains most of the HTML files which will be served

in response to requests. The default

DocumentRoot

for both the non secure and secure Web servers

is the

/var/www/html

directory. For example, the server might receive a request for the following

document:

http://your_domain/foo.html

The server will look for the following file in the default directory:

/var/www/html/foo.html

If you want to change the

DocumentRoot

so that it is not shared by the secure and the non secure

Web servers, see Section 14.8.

14.5.23.

Directory

Directory /path/to/directory

and

/Directory

tags are used to enclose a group of

configuration directives that are meant to apply only to that directory and all of its subdirectories. Any

directive which is applicable to a directory may be used within

Directory

tags.

File

tags

can be used in the same way, to apply to a specific file or files.

By default, very restrictive parameters are applied to the root directory, using the

Options

(see Sec 

tion 14.5.24) and

AllowOverride

(see Section 14.5.25) directives. Under this configuration, any

directory on your system which needs more permissive settings has to be explicitly given those set 

tings.