Years ago I knew how to configure the Apache webserver, back when I was a grad student / Linux admin. As any reader will have figured out, I’ve been a Microsoft-centric programmer for a number of years now. Thus it is not surprised that I would have forgotten some basics about Apache.

I wanted to re-setup a WAMP environment in XP sp3 and had just downloaded WAMPServer2. I desired to setup a root folder on the primary port and add two more ports so that I could have “virtual directories” without the directory (i.e. instead of http://localhost/something_, where the pages in /something_ have stylesheet references to /_, use http://localhost:81_).

Just set up the `VirtualHost_ section, right? (Like this guy says). Well, that didn’t work.

Scrolling through the `httpd.conf_, I found another possibility: apparently now (or has it always been this way?) you must explicitly set Apache to listen on the particular port. Thus I now have the following Listen section, where the last two lines are new:

#
# Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses and/or
# ports, instead of the default. See also the <VirtualHost>
# directive.
#
# Change this to Listen on specific IP addresses as shown below to
# prevent Apache from glomming onto all bound IP addresses.
#
#Listen 12.34.56.78:80
Listen 80
Listen 81
Listen 82

That did the trick :-).

Posted with : Tech, DevOps Tools and Practices