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Local Apache Web Server Wampserver

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:08:17 +0000

Running a local Apache web server is essential for many webmasters. It is always a good idea to test code locally before publishing it on the Internet. Professional webmasters usually test their code in a local web server before it gets published. Mainly to avoid possible downtimes in the live environment but also to avoid the hassle of having to upload and edit code on the Internet or network. It’s simply faster to test everything locally.

Wampserver is an Apache web server for the Windows operating system. It provides in many regards the same functionality of other web server solutions like XAMPP or Home Web Server which we have reviewed in the past. The latest version of the local web server package will install Apache 2.2.11, MySQL 5.1.36 and PHP 5.3.0 on the local computer system.

One interesting unique feature is the ability to add different versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP to the installation in the form of add-ons. This can be very handy to test a website locally under multiple different Apache, MySQL or PHP release versions.

The installation of Wampserver will always install the latest versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP. One interesting security feature is the ability to limit access to the web server to localhost. It is required to click on the “put online” option to make it available to other computer systems as well.

Additional Apache, MySQL and PHP versions can be installed from the Wamp add-ons page. All add-ons are provided as executables that can be installed easily on the operating system.

Webmasters who need to test code offline can use Wampserver to do so. It is especially useful to test code against multiple versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP. Something that the other home server solutions do not provide.

Wampserver is Open Source and can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Portable Web Server

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:28:53 +0000

Server2Go is a portable web server that can be run from any storage space in a Windows environment. It can be placed on USB devices, removable devices, CDs, DVDs or the hard drive of the computer. It requires no installation at all and can be run right from the location where it has been placed it.

The web server can be downloaded in various configurations. The various configurations range from a bare-bone Apache web server to a web server supporting MySQL, SQLite, Pearl and PHP. The configuration only has an effect on the type of applications that can be run on the web server. Most users will probably need at least MySQL and PHP support to run their websites locally.

The web server can be started by double-clicking on the Server2Go.exe executable file in the root directory of the server. This will load the various web server modules and display a start page in the web browser. The pms_config.ini file can be used to change various settings of the web server including the default web browser, the port and whether the modules like MySQL or PHP should be started as well.

The actual files of a website are placed in the htdocs directory of the web server. Loading them can be as easy as pointing your browser to 127.0.0.1:4001 or some subdirectory of it depending on the type of site.

MySQL comes with phpMyAdmin which is accessible from the main interface of the web server. Server2Go offers an uncomplicated way to run a web server, it is especially helpful in environments where software installations are restricted.

How To Deal With Huge Apache Web Server Log Files

Martin Brinkmann — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:37:08 +0000

I must admit that I have not been paying attention to the size of some of the Apache web server log files on my dedicated server. For those that do not know, the Apache logs are the log files of the Apache web server. They log every hit to a website and provide excellent material that can be processed by a log file analysis software.

This log files can become huge if you have a popular website. The current size of the Ghacks log file is 45 Gigabytes. If it continues growing in that pace the web server will run out of hard disk space pretty soon.

The first problem was to figure out how to backup the 45 Gigabyte file on the web server since I did not want to loose all the data stored within. The idea was born to compress the Apache web server log file first and then reduce it to a few Kilobytes with the echo command.

The Apache web server log files are stored in the /var/log/apache2 directory on the Debian dedicated server. The first command to issue would compress the contents of the apache2 directory into multiple tar files if the compressed file reaches a size maximum. This makes it easier to transfer files to another computer.

tar -cz directory | split -d -b 1024m - destination.tgz

Directory is the source directory where the Apache web server log files reside and destination.tgz is the name of the to be created compressed file. It is important to note that you might need to stop the Apache web server for the operation to succeed because the compression utility will stop if files get changed during procession.

The last thing that is to be done is to clear the original Apache web server log files in the log files directory. This can be done with the following command even if Apache is running.

echo " " > /var/log/apache2/filename.log

This simply overwrites the contents of the file. Please note again that some Linux distributions use another directory structure and that the log files can be located in another directory on the server.
This takes only a few seconds and the log file will be cleared from all contents afterwards.

Then it is just a matter of transferring the various compressed archives to another computer.