LX202: LAMP - Installing & Configuring Apache Server (1-2 Days)

Course Overview

Lamp stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and one of PHP, Perl, Python etc. and is one of the common development platforms for Linux. The focus of this course is on the A in LAMP. It is designed for anyone who needs to set up and run an Apache server. The course covers configuration for static web sites and options for dynamic content.

Audience

This course is aimed specifically at:

• traditional application developers who want to build web-based applications
• static html content creators with some programming experience who want to be able to build web applications with more dynamic content
• webmasters / web server administrators / system administrators who need to install and configure an Apache web server

Pre-Requisites

Attendees must:

• have a basic understanding of the Internet and be familiar with using browsers
• have some programming experience to appreciate the programming examples
• be familiar with the Linux operating system (when the course is run on that platform)

Course Objectives

After the course, attendees will be able to install and configure an Apache server including setting up both static and dynamic content.

Course Topics

• Introduction and Basic Configuration
• Web server overview: html, http, browsers, httpd
• History of web servers: NCSA, Apache
• Basic configuration: configuration files and options, daemon setup

• Virtual Hosts
• Virtual host concepts: IP-based, name-based
• Virtual host configuration

• Additional Configuration
• Web server log files: formats, configuration, use and analysis
• Server MIME types

• Dynamic Content Basics
• Understanding CGI concepts, architecture & requirements
• Useful CGI tasks: form processing, database access & manipulation
• SSI: similarities to CGI, .shtml implementation, examples
• CGI security: proper programming, proper configuration
• Database backends: query lookups, inserts, deletes, updates with SQL

• Apache Modules
• Architecture & Concepts
• mod_perl
• mod_php
• mod_status
• mod_usertrack
• mod_rewrite
• other modules

• Security and Authentication
• Basic access control by host/domain/network
• Apache security strategies
• Implementing Web-based password authentication
• Authentication scenarios
• Basic Cryptography and SSL concepts, SSL Certificates