CISE Help & Resources
CISE Web Server Technical Details
CISE runs version 1.3 of the Apache web server. Docuementation is available at the Apache docuementation site. Some technical information on the CISE setup is included here. Many useful tutorials are linked there as well.
Contents
Access Controls and Options
The local name for the per-directory configuration file is htaccess without the customary leading period. This choice is a legacy from days long past, but so are some of our users.
For background, this file controls both options and access for each directory. If the documentation states that a command is valid in an .htaccess context, then it may appear in your htaccess file. If you use options that are not valid, the server will refuse to serve pages from this or any underlying directory. The server will refuse access if the htaccess file is unreadable, as well. The server ignores requests for files matching htaccess and htpasswd with or without a leading period.
You can control many aspects of how the web server behaves with respect to your public_html directory. Your full abilities are beyond the scope of this document. We highlight a few features; read the official server documentation from the Apache web site for further information.
One of the most common uses for htaccess files is access control. Apache's access control module lets you allow and deny access based on
- domain names
- IP addresses with or without netmasks
- environment variables
- user-defined password files
The first three are simple to set up and examples are included in the documentation for the module. The password file requires more effort. A complete example is given here.
Supported Index Files
The Apache server allows you to use any of a number of formats for your index file, the file referenced by http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~username/. We currently support, in order of preference the following formats and extensions:
- HTML (filenames: index.html and index.htm),
- server-parsed HTML (filename: index.shtml),
- CGI-generated HTML (filename: index.cgi),
- files passed completely as-is (filename: index.asis), and
If there is demand, we can support PDF. This may be useful for on-line theses and tech reports. However, you can also use a translator like latex2html to generate HTML documents. These documents will be readable by a wider audience, but math equations, images, and layouts translate very poorly.
The as-is file type allows you to create simple re-directs without mucking with htaccess files. A file like the following will re-direct any reference to index.asis to otherfile.pdf:
Status: 302 Location: otherfile.pdf Content-type: text/html <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Lame redirection demo...</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> You're going <A HREF="otherfile.pdf">elsewhere</a>. </BODY> </HTML>
Similar effects can be accomplished using the rewrite module. This module is very, very powerful, and hence rather complicated. Use at your own risk.
CGI Execution, Server-side Includes, and Dynamic Pages
CGI execution is allowed at CISE. Some apache specific information is available here and here.
The full range of SSI functions are available. There is also a tutorial available.