Running Apache

In the good old days, Apache could be started and stopped by visiting the Sharing Preferences. Apache is still included in later versions of OSX, but now we need to open the Terminal application, and enter one of the following commands to control it:

• sudo apachectl start
• sudo apachectl stop
• sudo apachectl restart

Enter your admin password when prompted.
After starting Apache, check it's working by browsing to http://localhost

Notes:

• The default "system level" document root is /Library/WebServer/Documents/
• The Apache configuration file is located at: /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
• If Apache fails to start, use apachectl configtest to find possible reasons why!

To start Apache automatically after a restart, enter the folowing (unload to remove):

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist

Users can not generally write to the "system level" document folder. We can either change permissions, or enable user sites as existed in previous OSX versions.

Restricting access:

We can restrict access in the directory section of httpd.conf, for example, in the DocumentRoot section:

#Require all granted                                   comment out/change 'all granted'
Require local                                          allow localhost access only

There are many other Require (only from) possibilities:

Require ip 10.1.2.3                                    IP address
Require ip 192.168.1.104 192.168.1.205                 IP address's
Require ip 10.1                                        partial IP address
Require ip 10.1.0.0/255.255.0.0                        network/netmask pair
Require ip 10.1.0.0/16                                 CIDR notation
Require ip 2001:db8::a00:20ff:fea7:ccea                IPv6 address(s)
Require ip 2001:db8:2:1::/64                           IPv6, CIDR notation
Require host example.org                               domain-name
Require host .net example.edu                          partial domain-name
Require forward-dns bla.example.org                    forward-dns

If the require rule is not met, visitors are greeted to a 403 Forbidden page.

Enable User Sites:

1 Create a document root folder Sites in your home directory: mkdir ~/Sites
Note the Safari style Icon, which is a throwback to when the folder was standard.

2 Create a user config file: sudo nano /etc/apache2/users/username.conf

Paste in the following text, save and exit (ctrl-o, ctrl-x).

<Directory "/Users/*/Sites/">
  Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

3 Edit the Apache configuration: sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Find, and uncomment the following lines (use ctrl-w to search):

LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
LoadModule alias_module libexec/apache2/mod_alias.so
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
:
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

Save and exit (ctrl-o, ctrl-x)

4 Edit the user configuration: sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

Uncomment the following line:

Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf

Save and exit (ctrl-o, ctrl-x)

5 Create a PHP test file in the new user level document root (~/Sites) with the following command:

printf "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > ~/Sites/phpinfo.php

Restart Apache: sudo apachectl restart

6 Open http://localhost/~USERNAME/phpinfo.php (here, ~mike) in a browser, and behold!

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