User:Aeric/Apache Notes

Commands

RedHat commands worth knowing:

• service httpd restart - Restart Apache (generally unnecessary. Sometimes useful, "just to be sure")
• service httpd reload - Reload the configuration files

mediawiki.conf

The configuration file for MediaWiki is /etc/httpd/conf.d. mediawiki.conf, where:

• etc (eht-cee) is the "et cetera" container for stuff added to the system
• httpd is the HTTP Daemon (Apache)
• conf.d is the directory of configuration files (all files in this directory are read by Apache when it starts or reloads.)

Important: All files in that directory are processed, so make backup files elsewhere.

About that query string

Motivation

Pages with plain names seem to work properly. The incoming link is converted to the short URL form, and TOC entries have that form, as well.

But bookmarks that go to old pages that have :, /, or ! in them don't get a URL rewrite, because those characters don't seem to be handled by the URL-segment-at-a-time matching rules. (They must be MediaWiki matching rules, because Apache is *not* doing the redirect. MediaWiki is.)

Idea

We could make a redirect.php page that parses the query string, creates the new URL, and sends a 301-redirect back to the browser. That would be cool. But it's a fair amount of work for a few special pages that, over time, will no longer be bookmarked.