UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi!, I am a bit of a linux neebie. I just installed and setup appache 2. I have it all installed the way it should be according to the appache documentation. When i try to view my page i find that i can't. Can someone help me please

More info might help. Consider posting your *nix version, config info, and any errors you are getting.

Following the documentation does not necessarily work. It all depends on what you are trying to do. You noted in the subject that it is a firewall problem. How do you know this? If it is a firewall blocking issue, you ought to be able to view your site as localhost. I suppose no firewall is configured to block the loopback interface or a lot of programs will not work (not just Apache).

Do give us your observation with the localhost test. File not found/Forbidden/Internal server error (that sounds like some Apache configuration errors)? Connection refused (that will be the server is not/cannot be started at all!)? If localhost test is okay, but remote access fails, then it will probably be a firewall issue (if Apache is not misconfigured to listen on the wrong network interface). If you guess it is a firewall issue, you may wish to do a /usr/sbin/iptables -L to dump your firewall rules and post here.

thanks for your help, i have tried all kinds of things since my last post, and made no real head way. I tried the localhost connection and all i got was an error statng that my connection was the error "connection was refused when attempting to connect to localhost". I am using a fedoracore 2 linux distro. but how do i post my . conf file?

Have you checked to see if apache is listening on a port, for example port 80?

Please post the output of this command:

netstat -t

or

netstat -tn

It's very likely that your Apache is not started at all. First, do as Neo suggested to check whether Apache is listening on a port (80 for http or 443 for https, unless you change them). If it is not started, try to start it manually, with something like

/usr/sbin/apachectl start

It will usually give you some error messages if it cannot be started owing to configuration errors. Or, you will find this information in the Apache error logs, somewhere like /var/log/httpd (different installations put it at different places --- you will find it set by the ErrorLog Apache configuration directive in the httpd.conf)

[Neo: Isn't "netstat -ln" a better command for checking listen()ing servers?]

Dear cbkihong,

Yes, netstat -ln works better for just listening sockets, as does netstat -an (all, including listening sockets).

.... the -t options used to stand for "all TCP sockets", and I thought that also included listening TCP sockets, .... not only active ones, but I might be thinking about an older version of netstat.

My guess is that Shifty has a configuration error and apache httpd is not starting.