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2

How does apache webserver "decide" what content to serve when no virtual hosts are configured?

rated 0 times [ 2] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 511 / 3 Years ago, thu, june 3, 2021, 8:09:35

I am trying to debug some weird behaviour on an apache 2.4 install on Ubuntu 14.04 server.

I notice if I remove all virtual hosts and additional configurations by commenting out their IncludeOptional lines from the apache.conf config file, e.g.

File: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf



# DISABLE generic snippets of statements

# IncludeOptional conf-enabled/*.conf



# DISABLE the virtual host configurations:

# IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

(Then restart apache)

If I browse to the server apache will still serve content from /var/www.

My question is, how or where is apache being "told" to use that as a document root?

is it some ultimate fall back DocumentRoot that is compiled into apache itself?

Ive looked in the apache configuration files and I can't find any DocumentRoot = /var/www directives?

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allowiel

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3 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago ainlyyor · Accepted Answer

There is an ultimate fallback DocumentRoot location. From the Apache docs:

Default:    DocumentRoot /usr/local/apache/htdocs

However, for packaging, the default is changed to /var/www (since packages aren't supposed to reside in or use /usr/local). The particular patch that does this is fhs_compliance.patch:

--- a/include/httpd.h

+++ b/include/httpd.h

@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@

 #define DOCUMENT_LOCATION  HTTPD_ROOT "/docs"

 #else

 /* Set default for non OS/2 file system */

-#define DOCUMENT_LOCATION  HTTPD_ROOT "/htdocs"

+#define DOCUMENT_LOCATION  "/var/www"

 #endif

 #endif /* DOCUMENT_LOCATION */

You can examine the full patch by downloading it (apt-get source apache2; cd apache2*; less debian/patches/fhs_compliance.patch) or online at Debian's packaging Git repository.