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Chapter 14. Apache HTTP Server

authuser

If authentication was required, this is the username with which the user identified herself. Usu 

ally, this is not used, so you will see a

in its place.

[date]

The date and time of the request.

"request"

The request string exactly as it came from the browser or client.

status

The HTTP status code which was returned to the browser or client.

bytes

The size of the document.

referer

This can give the URL of the webpage which linked to the the current request.

user agent

This gives the name of the browser or client making the request.

14.5.42.

ServerSignature

The

ServerSignature

directive adds a line containing the Apache server version and the

Server 

Name

of the serving host to any server generated documents (for example, error messages sent back

to clients).

ServerSignature

is set to

on

by default. You can change it to

off

, so no signature line

will be added, or you can change it to

EMail

.

EMail

will add a

mailto:ServerAdmin

HTML tag

to the signature line.

14.5.43.

Alias

The

Alias

setting allows directories to be outside the

DocumentRoot

directory and yet still acces 

sible to the Web server. Any URL ending in the alias will automatically resolve to the alias' path. By

default, one alias is already set up. An

icons

directory can be accessed by the Web server, but the

directory is not in the

DocumentRoot

. The

icons

directory, an alias, is actually

/var/www/icons/

,

not

/var/www/html/icons/

.

14.5.44.

ScriptAlias

The

ScriptAlias

setting defines where CGI scripts (or other types of scripts) can be found. Gener 

ally, you do not want to leave CGI scripts within the

DocumentRoot

. If CGI scripts are in

Documen 

tRoot

, they could potentially be viewed as text documents. Even if you do not care if people can see

and then use your CGI scripts, revealing how they work creates opportunities for unscrupulous people

to exploit any security holes in the script and may create a security risk for your server. By default,

the

cgi bin

directory is a

ScriptAlias

of

/cgi bin/

and is actually located in

/var/www/cgi 

bin/

.

Your

/var/www/cgi bin

directory has

Options ExecCGI

set, meaning that execution of CGI

scripts is permitted within that directory.