Have your OWN WWW Site (World-Wide-Web)

*********************************************************************

Do you want to have your OWN World-Wide-Web site?

If you have an account on a linux-based machine which is connected to the internet, you can set one up in less than 15 minutes. Here is how :

1. Let us suppose that you are a user with login name 'vibnyk' You will then have a home directory /home/vibnyk You now need two subdirectories, one to keep the 'server software' and the other where you will have your home page.

You can make these to subdirectories with

mkdir tmpsrv
mkdir tmphome

2. Change to the subdirectory tmpsrv, and copy the files

httpd - Size 435055 bytes, this is cern httpd 3.0 executable

httpd.conf - Size 102 bytes

there. You can make the 'httpd' file executable by the command chmod ugo+x httpd

3. Edit the file httpd.conf if necessary. This is an ascii file, and joe or vi could be used for editing it.

It has only five lines in it.

The first line is ServerRoot /home/vibnyk/tmpsrv

This is the directory where the httpd file is kept. You should change 'vibnyk' to your login name.

The second line is Port 8001

Leave it as it is. It will probably create problems if more than one user on your system gives the same port number! You can use numbers from 8001 to say 8080.

The third and fourth lines are

UserId nobody
GroupId nobody

Leave them as they are.

The fifth and the last line is

Pass /* /home/vibnyk/tmphome/*

You should replace vibnyk by your login name

4. Change to the subdirectory 'tmphome', and copy the file 'Welcome.html' there. This file is an ascii file, 175 bytes in size. You can edit it if you wish, but please restrict the changes to only the following three places.

(i) You can replace the phrase 'Testing cern httpd 3.0 server' by any other title. Please keep the and unchanged.

(ii) The 'Testing www site' can be changed, provided

and

are left as they are

(iii) The line 'Last edited .....-nvj' may be replaced by giving the correct date, time and your initials. Let

be unchanged.

5. Now, change to the tmpsrv directory, and give the command httpd -r ./httpd.conf & Thats all. Now the server is running in the background, and will continue to run even if you log off!

6. Go to another machine, and use netscape (or some other browser) and connect using the address http://a.b.c.d:8001

where a.b.c.d is the numerical ip address of the computer where your server has been installed, and 8001 is the port number in the httpd.conf file.

You should now see the entries in your 'Welcome.html' file

7. You can now go around telling people that you are running a www server, and that you have a home page, and that you can teach them to install their own server.

Alternatively, you can read up a little about 'HTML', and offer to create home pages for others as well. These files can be in your tmphome directory.

8. The best thing, of course, is for your systems administrator to install this server. The procedure is almost identical to what is given above, but if you need more information, please feel free to get in touch with me.

9. For more information Refer : " HTML for Dummies" by Ed Tittel and Steve James, 1995
IDG Books Worldwide Inc.

Comdex computer publishing (division of PUSTAK MAHAL), NewDelhi 12.

Good luck

n.v. joshi
cesnj@ces.iisc.ernet.in

Dr.N.V.Joshi
Centre for Ecological sciences
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore 560 012, India

E Mail: cesnj@ces.iisc.ernet.in

BACK TO *********************************************************************