Shoutbox

I'm installing Apache on my computer, mainly for myself, for testing PHP and other code. I might make some things public, but only very few.

In the installer asks some information from me, and I'm not sure what to fill in.



The first two options I have no idea about. I have a domain name. Administrator email address is obvious. What considerations are there with the last setting there (service/not-service).

PS my router settings has these fields, and I'm not sure about them either:

quote:

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Host Name:      (Required by some ISPs)   
Domain Name:      (Required by some ISPs)

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You can enter whatever you want in those 3 fields... they're not really important, and you can edit them later in the config file anyway...

code:

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# ServerName gives the name and port that the server uses to identify itself.
# This can often be determined automatically, but we recommend you specify
# it explicitly to prevent problems during startup.
#
# If this is not set to valid DNS name for your host, server-generated
# redirections will not work.  See also the UseCanonicalName directive.
#
# If your host doesn't have a registered DNS name, enter its IP address here.
# You will have to access it by its address anyway, and this will make
# redirections work in a sensible way.

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code:

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# ServerAdmin: Your address, where problems with the server should be
# e-mailed.  This address appears on some server-generated pages, such
# as error documents.  e.g. admin@your-domain.com

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Also see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/platform/windows.html.en#inst

quote:

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Originally posted by http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/platform/windows.html.en#inst

1. Network Domain. Enter the DNS domain in which your server is or will be registered in. For example, if your server's full DNS name is server.mydomain.net, you would type mydomain.net here.
   
   
2. Server Name. Your server's full DNS name. From the example above, you would type server.mydomain.net here.

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My domain is a subdomain from DynDNS, a DNS lookup of my subdomain points to my computer, but the root domain points to some person's own server, and they let DynDNS give subdomains of their root domain to people (like me).

Should I enter the root domain (which I have nothing to do with) into the first field, or something else.

PS I'd like to know what I should think about when I choose whether wo run it as a service or not.

In that case your server's DNS is the full subdomain path.  IIRC though it isn't really important as WDZ says because it's just to make the apache error messages look right (404 messages say HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found on server.example.com or something like that).

As for running as a service, if you want apache to run "always on" you should definitely run it as a service.  Essentially what that does is makes the apache processes part of the system; they'll run at startup without the need for the cmd window or tray icons.  If on the other hand you're going to sporadically start it for short periods of time you can save system resources by not doing it.  Either way you can still turn apache on/off as you like.