Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with webserver

I thought WAMPserver was, like, for idiots. I feel like an idiot so why doesn't it work?

Foam Pants — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:49:39 -0800

I am following a tutorial on how to install WAMPserver and Wordpress on my Windows machine to kickstart my learning of CM systems and PHP. A crucial component won't install and I don't know nuthin' about how to fix the problem. I found This tutorial on installing and configuring WAMPserver, which is ideal for a dunderhead like myself who can barely compute. When I get to the part where they tell you to go to SQLitemanager, I realized that it wasn't in my WAMPserver menu. I have unistalled and reinstalled twice and it doesn't show up. I have tried to duplicate their instructions using a SQLite Manager plugin for Firefox but it isn't working. I have searched for evidence of other people having the same problem but came up empty-handed. I am at a loss to find a solution. Am I looking for the answers in the wrong places? This is being installed on a machine without windows server software.

redirecting Coldfusion without software installed

Foam Pants — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:56:48 -0800

My new webserver doesn't have Coldfusion so I am hosting my .cfm pages on another server. Can I redirect traffic to these new addresses using a .htaccess file or do I have to have the software installed to even get a redirect on a .cfm page? How would you do it?

SSL Client Certificates

banshee — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:45:51 -0800

Please help a noob with client-side SSL certificates. What is the process for generating SSL client certs? What kind of information is needed? Who generates them? I have a web server SSL cert installed (IIS), when users try to connect they are prompted to choose their client certificate from a list. (This is the behavior I want). The web server SSL certificate was issued by Entrust.net

Wait a minute Mr. Postman!

siclik — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:10:16 -0800

Why are some random automated messages suddenly not being delivered through our email server? We have a linux server over at The Planet running WHM/cPanel. We've never had issues with our email until recently. Two recent events have led me to believe that some emails are not getting through:

1.) An example email address on our troubled server is siclik@example.com. I have Ooma as my personal VoIP provider and have yet to receive a voice mail notification email (or password reminder email) at siclik@example.com. When I use siclik@hotmail.com, notifications arrive immediately. I've triple checked that I've entered my email address correctly.

2.) Our accountant told me just today that he's not receiving end-of-the-day automated credit card batch confirmations through his accountant@example.com email address.

Our server is running SpamAssassin, however I've added both Ooma and the credit card company to the spam filter's white list, so emails should be going through, right?

Anyone have experience with this and willing to share some knowledge?

this webpage is for loading and unloading only. no bookmarking

cayla — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:26:49 -0800

Is there anyway with apache redirect's (mod_rewrite with a 301 rule) for the underlying web page to detect the redirect and run some JS or PHP (or anything really) to say, 'HEY USER!!! Ya you! Change your bookmarks please!'? I would like to change the domain name for a website I have and I can handle the actual rewrite rules just fine, but I would really like people to notice when they have been redirected so I can eventually phase out the old domain name.

Ideally, this could be bit of inline text above the banner for the web page. (Maybe I could make it blood red or blinking if I was feeling evil....)

I do *not* want to use pop-ups. Not web page pop-ups nor notification pop-ups. (You know, those 'OK or Cancel' ones). That would be annoying.

PS - I am aware that changing the domain name will kill page rank, etc. It is a very low traffic site and I am not concerned about that at all.

And now that I logically follow that through... It being low traffic, I guess this is a slightly moot question, but now that I am stumped it is going to bug me until I find an answer.

Need a book recommendation for J2EE

smurdah — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:46:47 -0800

I'd like to learn more about design patterns and designing a maintainable infrastructure for a J2EE web application. Do you have any book recommendations?

www-wrong

le morte de bea arthur — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:56:48 -0800

How do I prevent Firefox from adding 'www' and '.com' to local URLs? I have a web server on my local network that I access via http://test/

Whenever I forget to turn on this server (or if it goes into standby or whatever), Firefox first tries the corrrect URL, then tries http://www.test.com. I find this more annoying that I probably should.

Any idea how I can prevent this second-guessing by Firefox? It's got to be in about:config somewhere, but I'm blessed if I can find it.

Failing that, how do I learn to be less anal?

Quantifying the Slashdot Effect

evariste — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:54:19 -0800

I'm trying to figure out if a server I'm working on can withstand being linked to by very high traffic websites. Can anyone tell me the basic traffic characteristics of, say, a front page link from: Drudge Report, Yahoo! Buzz, Huffington Post, Slashdot, Reddit, or Digg? I'm using ab (ApacheBench) and I'd like to have some idea of how many requests, and at what level of concurrency, I should be trying to make this server capable of pushing out. Thanks! I already know what to do (log and observe, cache cache cache, tune and tweak db and web server configuration, etc) and am experienced in that process. I just need some typical numbers to help me figure out when I'm done!

How do i get a VM to share a local folder?

muddylemon — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:05:11 -0800

How do I get a vmware machine to mount a folder on it's host machine? I'm trying to emulate something we do at work on a home machine. I'm a web developer, and have a great sysadmin to work his black magic at work, and am at a loss at how to get it working at home.
At work we have VMware machines that emulate our web server enviroment on our dev machines. We run the virtual and map local.whatever.com in the hosts file to the virtual machine as a web server. The directory that holds the files for local.whatever.com is on the drive of the host machine, so we can do our development there, test in local.whatever.com, and life is good.
So, on a home machine, I've setup an ubuntu server, apache, etc. I have my router forwarding http traffic to it, it's working fine.
What i'd like it to do is: mount a folder on the home machine as the root of a site, set up apache to serve files from there. There's a setting in the vmware workstation for shared folders, but besides enabling and disabling there doesn't seem to be any useful options.
The only alternate solution I've thought of is setting up the folder inside the VM, setting up SVN on it, and just transferring from a local folder to the one inside the VM with SVN. It might be a better solution, but I'd like to at least know how to get the original plan to work. Any ideas?
env info: machine is running XP, VM is running ubuntu server, apache2, php, mysql, etc.

VMWare: Web server on guest OS, accessed from Host?

weston — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:40:26 -0800

VMWare Fusion as dev server: How can I set things up so I can access a web server running under the guest OS (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) from the host machine? Bonus points if it can be done without plugging into an ethernet network. I've got a web app that will eventually be deployed under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and the client sent me a VMWare image of the production machine so I could test in an environment as similar to theirs as possible (I usually just run the AMP stack under OS X, but they're using older versions of each piece of software, and are unlikely to upgrade soon because of some legacy apps, and we all know php installations vary wildly anyway, so this seems to make sense).

Since I've got VMWare Fusion, I figured this'd be a snap, but there appear to be two challenges:

1) Red Hat Enterprise Linux appears to be expecting an wired Ethernet connection by default. I'm primarily doing work on a MacBook Pro with connectivity done by WiFi. Having to plug in would suck... but this might be the part where getting WiFi to work under Linux would suck more.

2) I'm not sure what tack to take for the general network settings for VMWare (probably "Bridged" or "Host Only"?) and corresponding appropriate TCP/IP settings for the guest OS.

I'd love it if someone could post or point to a comprehensive explanation for making this work, but if you can help with either point #1 or point #2 (or offer any other advice), that'd be great too.

Thanks!

Using Apache to (almost) bypass Apache?

holgate — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:18:20 -0800

Is there a simple way to use Apache's ProxyPass directive so that everything apart from a directory beneath the webroot gets passed on to another server? If not, can it be done another way? I'm wanting to combine lighttpd with Apache to take some load of a server, but unlike the standard ProxyPass setup, I'd like the httpd.conf to direct things like this:

http://mysite.com/ -> lighttpd running on port 81
http://mysite.com/foo/ -> Apache running on port 80

Is that possible with ProxyPass? If not, can it be done another way, perhaps by swapping the ports and putting it in the lighttpd config?

Apache2, mod_php, suexec security confusion.

odinsdream — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:58:46 -0800

Apache2 security theory; mod_php versus CGI php and the use of suExec: What is the non-theoretical problem with running Apache2 with mod_php and thus without using suexec on a dedicated system? I'm setting up a typical LAMP environment. I've used phpsecinfo to evaluate my current environment and implemented all of the recommended changes except for two, Group ID and User ID.

The distribution is the most recent Ubuntu Server with the mostly-default Apache2 configuration, and the mostly-default PHP installation, with the exception of the changes recommended by phpsecinfo.

These warnings indicate that my group and user ID numbers are below 100 (33 to be specific), and therefore may be a problem. I am not sure how to interpret this.

I followed the documentation links and was about to implement SuExec when I realized that this meant doing a lot of other reconfiguration, like not using mod_php, and that meant changing a lot of other things, etc.

This is not a shared system. It will only be used to host one company's applications through several virtual hosts. The applications will be PHP-based, and most frequently will use the Symfony framework. Apache currently runs as www-data, whose shell is /bin/false. SSH access to the system is by public-key authentication only and is further restricted at the daemon level to only specific real users.

What do I need to do to run this securely? Resources, guides and real-world examples would be greatly appreciated.

PHP Uploads Result in Corrupt Files

charlesroper — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:35:15 -0800

PHP gurus unite! Tell me why my PHP uploads always result in corrupt files and what I can do to fix it! I've installed PHPWEBFTP on my website. I followed all of the installation instructions and can connect to my FTP server through the script. I can even upload and download files. The only problem is that any file that is either uploaded or downloaded via this script becomes corrupt. What gives?

This script is hosted on a dedicated server owned by The Planet .

You can try it yourself at https://store.gkmachine.com/secureftp2/

user: meta@gkmachine.com
pw: meta

For kicks, I uploaded the exact same script to another webserver (owned by Dotster) and it worked flawlessly. Uploads/downloads were not corrupted if I accessed the script on this webserver.

This leads me to believe that it's a setting in either php.conf or httpd.conf on The Planet server - endless searches have left me puzzled and frustrated.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

I do declare! But my XML doesn't.

foxydot — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:24:42 -0800

We are moving our sites from a WAMP to a LAMP and one of the XML parser classes has gone all haywire. Eeep. I love that I have another developer on my team now, but unfortunately, that means I don't know every piece of code on our sites. Kid Wonder created an app for sending our product (video based) to mobile devices using the class WURFL_PHP. He *said* he tested everything on the new server before we changed, but now that the A records are switched (something I need a third party for) the parse in his application is returning "XML error: XML declaration not finished at line 1 column 15".

A Google of the error turned up a few CMS install issues, and several pages displaying the error, but nothing too useful to me. Everything was fine on the WAMP server, so I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing. (God knows I've had my head in the trees today and my grey matter isn't where it should be.)

I checked out the XML doc, and it's properly formatted, as far as I can tell. (It's the doc supplied here.) The class is well written and doesn't seem to be missing anything. XML features are all enabled in PHP. Help Mefites!

How can I run a web server on OS X without admin access?

AmbroseChapel — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:31:05 -0800

How can I run a web server on OS X without admin access? You'll just have to trust me on the reasons, but I want to to run a fully-functioning web server (or at least, one which can do dynamic pages in Perl or PHP) on OS X (Leopard) machines, without having the administrator password.

Having it on a USB stick seems the most likely approach -- a web server is an application after all, and I won't be able to install new applications without the admin password, but I will be able to run an application from a stick.

This guy says he's done it, but annoyingly, not how, and hasn't made the details available: http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/2007/aug/03/getting-web-server-run-usb-drive, and this guy says he's got a beta version with limited functionality but wants me to pay for it sight unseen: http://www.server2go-web.de/features/mac.html.

I reckon I'm probably clueful enough to attempt my own tweaks to MAMPP given a few starting hints. Would it be incredibly difficult?

Any other solutions or suggestions gratefully received of course.

Strange Entries in Web Server Log

GregWithLime — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:47:05 -0800

Help me understand strange entries in web server log that look like spam attacks. A few times a day, I will see an entry in my web server log where the query string portion of the URL has been substituted with a link to another site. In other words, what is normal is this:
http://www.somesite.com/mypage.asp?ProductID=13406

Instead, I see this:
http://www.somesite.com/mypage.asp?ProductID=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vacacionalhouse.com%2Fen%2Fimg%2Fvohe%2Fseyon%2F&Type=QF

The site referenced in the query string is pretty much something different each time I see it. But, it always looks like some spam site. I don't think this is a hack attempt. But thinking it is a "spam bot gone wild" trying to get entries into a web server's DB in the hopes that it will appear on some page somewhere. If it helps, the referer field is not present in the request and the IP address of the requestor changes from day to day.

What do you think is going on? Thanks!

How can I replicate data between several IIS 6.0 WebServers ?

hboogz — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:38:53 -0800

IIS 6.0 Replication/Failover Software Suggestion/Recommendations ? I'm looking for a software application that does real-time/on demand file and metabase replication between four IIS 6.0 webservers. I know of xosoft's WANsyncHA products, does anyone else have any other recommendations ? I have an F5 BigIP 1500 LTM handling the load balancing of the network traffic, but need a package that can replicate file level changes and the entire IIS 6.0 metabase.

Installing MediaWiki on XP with an Existing Apache Webserver

jjsonp — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:20:58 -0800

MediaWiki install: Apache, MySQL, & PHP already on my machine? After some trial and error I successfully installed MediaWiki on my home XP machine. First I tried installing Apache + MySQL + PHP separately without success, then I discovered XAMPP and that worked like a charm.

My question is this: at work we are running StoreGrid, which already has installed Apache & PHP (and also MySQL I believe) on my computer. Should I try to get MediaWiki to work with these current installations, or should I install additional instances (perhaps using XAMPP)? My machine at work is also XP.

I tried installing MediaWiki but I can't find the Apache htdocs folder that exists after installing XAMPP, or determine what the root webserver folder is. When I access the StoreGrid web interface I navigate to my machine's name on port 6060 but I can't figure out which folder that references.

Are there any problems with installing multiple instances of Apache/MySQL/PHP? Are there benefits to getting MediaWiki to work with StoreGrid's instances (assuming I can do so)?

Thanks!

What is a simple "download ticket" manager program for a webserver?

beelerspace — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:32:16 -0800

Is there a download manager (php preferably) that can generate "download tickets" for a file? Ideally, I'd like this to happen: the php create a list of "tickets" - a generated set of characters - to distribute, and then be set a number of times a file can be downloaded with each "ticket."

Does such a piece of code exist? I have scoured the ends of the php script wastelands and found none.

Disordered HTML packets?

jarsyl — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:10:10 -0800

What is wrong with our Windows 2003 webserver? The web pages it serves are usually (but not always) missing some of the HTML when viewed on other machines, playing havoc with the layout. What's going on? Network guru filter: one of the webservers I manage and develop for at my office has developed a very strange problem after a change in the network interface.

Web pages served by it (PHP 4, Apache 2.1, Windows 2003 Server) sometimes are missing pieces of the HTML or even show the HTTP header in the middle of the page. If the same page is repeatedly reloaded, about 1/3 of the time it will display correctly. The problem pages all use AJAX as far as I can tell.

This application drew no complaints before the switch. It was attached to two separate networks through two ethernet cards. Now it is using only one card and the settings on the router or something are supposed to limit the access of one group of users who were previously segregated onto one network.

Some more data points:
1) on my multiboot Windows XP workstation the problem shows in both in IE and Firefox.
2) when the workstation is booted into Linux the same pages show no problems.
3) again, no problems with the same pages when viewed in either browser running on the server itself.

Unfortunately I am a web developer, not a network engineer, so I'm not even sure what keywords would describe this problem, let alone know what it could be caused by. The network staff at my office have not been able to help much yet, although they're coming in next week to take a look. I'm now looking at using ethereal to try and see if packets are somehow being disordered, but I'm really over my head. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Protecting mah bandwidth

calhound — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:12:11 -0800

Website admin question: I want to put up a website with about 10000+ charts. I don't mind people copying images, but how can I protect against a site sucker barging in, scooping them up, and killing my bandwidth? I wish I could generate a bunch of static HTML pages with simple IMG tags, but I'm guessing this isn't possible. What might PHP have to offer for protecting my content from site suckers?

Is there a good speedtest tool you can host on IIS?

upc_head — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:51:11 -0800

Is there a free or inexpensive package for self-hosting a bandwidth speed test on an IIS 6 server? Hey gang.
I take care of a variety of windows networks, and would like to add a web-based tool to some of the sites so that remote users of Terminal Services etc can test their real bandwith against their main server.
We've all used them, but hosting your own can create better pictures of what performance users can expect.

So far searches have either turned up great tools that charge huge amounts to license their perfect speedtest code.
or are written in PHP (awesome! but it would be tough to sell our team on installing another language on the SBS server for 1 small tool)

I'm sure there must be a cheap/free downloadable self-hostable speedtest package suitable for the IIS web server environment? (flash, ASP or ASP.NET would be perfect)

setting up a website/webserver from an apartment

mrkohrea — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:20:50 -0800

What kind of internet provider and other stuff do I need to run a website out of my apartment? I think I'm going to launch a website for public consumption, and I put my chances at popular success at .01% :-) For the time being, I'd rather deal with the hardware.

From what I can gather, I don't need a static IP. What would the advantage be of having one?

My current upload speed with my cable modem is a theoretical max of 512Kbps. At what point will that not be enough?

What questions do I need to ask an internet provider besides "how fast will the connection be?" and "how much will it cost me?"?

Is there a point at which it's cheaper to have root access at a host that takes care of the hardware than it is to have whatever company speed up the internet access from my apartment?

How to load test a home server

primer_dimer — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 03:03:11 -0800

How to (gently) load-test my home server (linux, details inside) So I've set up an old PC as a webserver using my home ADSL connection, mainly for my own education (and I'm certainly learning a lot!). I use it mainly to serve my blog, which up till now has been a very small-scale personal project for friends and family (awstats reports 4361 hits last month). I've been thinking about posting a few longer articles about semi-obscure but possibly useful-to-some-people topics (managing bibliographies in Openoffice, HDR photography in linux, etc). Thus, I'm wondering how my connection will cope if several people try to connect at the same time - this also made me wonder about image/page optimisation, etc.

So, in the interests of learning more about this stuff, I need advice on how to simulate multiple connections to my server. At first I though that there might be a free online service for this, but then I realised that such a service would be an easy way to DOS someone else's server, and was thus unlikely to exist. I have access to a (linux) work computer on a much faster connection, so presumably I could simulate multiple connections to my server from here (I'm thinking upstream bandwidth from the server will probably be the bottleneck). I've had a quick look at openwebload which seems to be along the right lines. Ideally I'd like to be able to test the responsiveness of the front page, different pages, static vs dynamic pages, images on my server vs hosted elsewhere, etc with different numbers of connections.

I know that the sensible thing to do if I were expecting a large amount of traffic to a particular article would be to have it hosted somewhere else, but I'm a geek and I feel I might learn something if I try it myself. I know a lot of MeFites are sysadmin etc., I'd be grateful for any suggestions. Just ask if you need more details.

Oh noes! My website is getting pwnt!

SpecialK — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 12:26:43 -0800

Does anyone have any experience implementing Pound or any other linux-based reverse proxy system? I'm trying to solve a "my website is getting pwnt by traffic!" solution by this weekend.