[be] [task #10012] various web server landscape

[Teus Benschop]

URL:
  <http://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?10012>

                 Summary: various web server landscape
                 Project: Bibledit
            Submitted by: teus
            Submitted on: Wed 30 Dec 2009 08:40:13 AM CAT
         Should Start On: Wed 30 Dec 2009 12:00:00 AM CAT
   Should be Finished on: Wed 30 Dec 2009 12:00:00 AM CAT
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any

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Details:

I personally use mostly lighttpd as it is neat and does what I want. So 
suddenly Apache hogging port 80 would not be nice. Particularly as the 
settings are hardcoded into cpp and a recompile would be necessary to 
change this


As I said, I am using preferentially lighttpd in my machine and many 
others do so too. It is not about sharing a server to translate jointly 
or separately but simply sharing a computer with potential joint logins. 
Or about having other things running too and needing/wanting port 80.

Think e.g. university computers, unix based and with user accounts + X 
logins. Many SIL people work in unis.

Up to this point one could compile and install bibledit in one's own 
local ~/bin  but with these changes things will start to go pearshape.


At a minimum location of directories and ports used should be user 
configurable.





> 1. I tried accessing the home pages through Apache on Ubuntu 9.10, and
> this is what it says:
> Not Found
> The requested URL /~teus was not found on this server.
> Apache/2.2.12 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80

> What would the user or the bibledit installation script need to do to
> enable this function? By default serving homepages through apache seems
> to be switched off in Ubuntu and most likely other distributions too.

In Ubuntu, the commands would be

  sudo /usr/sbin/a2enmod userdir
  sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

In Debian, you would probably do

  su -c "/usr/sbin/a2enmod userdir"
  su -c "/etc/init.d/apache2 restart"




I'm not sure of their relative capabilities, but there is no shortage of
other web servers available in the Debian/Ubuntu world, including nginx,
thttpd, webfs, yaws, fnord, roxen and lighttpd :)



> This test was now removed from the ./configure script as it appeared to
> look for php-cli, not php itself which would have been enough. Other
> ways of testing the php-capability of the servers would need to be
> invented. Any thoughts?

Just send it a test HTTP request that needs PHP or whatever the exact
functionality requirement is, and see what it does in response.  If it
does the right thing, great, if not, warn the user :)  Of course this
needs to be a run time, not build-time, test, and could then test a
user-configured web server, or not test at all if the user explicitly
configured "no web server at all".  This way you could 'grey out' all
"web-server requiring" menu items if there is no available web server
suitable for BE, too.



For team collaboration, I can see the value in using a shared team web 
server, but I would have expected that would be something which is 
installed and configured just once per team, not once for each BE user 
or per BE workstation.  Then each copy of BE used by that team is 
configured to "know" the location (base URL) of the team web server.  Or 
maybe that base URL could be stored per project, in case one user is 
part of several teams -- but the point is that each user should not have 
to run their own web server to get this kind of team collaboration.  A 
ten person team needs one shared web server, not ten web servers!








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