194

Chapter 14. Apache HTTP Server

Using

Directory

tags, the

DocumentRoot

is defined to have less rigid parameters, so that HTTP

requests can be served from it.

The

cgi bin

directory is set up to allow the execution of CGI scripts, with the

ExecCGI

option. If

you need to execute a CGI script in another directory, you will need to set

ExecCGI

for that directory.

For example, if your

cgi bin

is

/var/www/cgi bin

, but you want to execute CGI scripts from

within

/home/my_cgi_directory

, add an

ExecCGI

directive to a set of

Directory

directives like

the following to your

httpd.conf

file:

Directory /home/my_cgi_directory

Options +ExecCGI

/Directory

To allow CGI script execution in

/home/my_cgi_directory

, you will need to take a few extra

steps besides setting

ExecCGI

. You will also need to have the

AddHandler

directive uncommented

to identify files with the

.cgi

extension as CGI scripts. See Section 14.5.59 for instructions on setting

AddHandler

. Permissions for CGI scripts, and the entire path to the scripts, must be set to 0755.

14.5.24.

Options

The

Options

directive controls which server features are available in a particular directory. For ex 

ample, under the restrictive parameters specified for the root directory,

Options

is set to only

Fol 

lowSymLinks

. No features are enabled, except that the server is allowed to follow symbolic links in

the root directory.

By default, in your

DocumentRoot

directory,

Options

is set to include

Indexes

,

Includes

and

FollowSymLinks

.

Indexes

permits the server to generate a directory listing for a directory if no

DirectoryIndex

(for example,

index.html

) is specified.

Includes

means that server side in 

cludes are permitted.

FollowSymLinks

allows the server to follow symbolic links in that directory.

You will also need to include

Options

statements for directories within virtual hosts directives, if

you want your virtual hosts to recognize those

Options

.

For example, server side includes are already enabled inside the

/var/www/html

directory, because

of the

Options Includes

line within the

Directory "/var/www/html"

directives section.

However, if you want a virtual host to recognize server side includes, you will need to include a section

like the following within your virtual host's tags:

Directory /var/www/html

Options Includes

/Directory

14.5.25.

AllowOverride

The

AllowOverride

directive sets whether or not any

Options

can be overridden by the declara 

tions in an

.htaccess

file. By default, both the root directory and the

DocumentRoot

are set to

allow no

.htaccess

overrides.

14.5.26.

Order

The

Order

directive simply controls the order in which

allow

and

deny

directives are evaluated.

Your server is configured to evaluate the

Allow

directives before the

Deny

directives for your

Docu 

mentRoot

directory.