In the Main tab, you'll need to enter the e-mail address of the person who maintains the Web server in the Webmaster Email Address text box. This entry corresponds to the ServerAdmin directive in httpd.conf. The directive primarily provides the user with an address they can use to report problems to the server's administrator. In most cases, this will probably be you. The default address for this option is root@localhost, but you may want to use something more personalized, such as lizlaker@localhost. Available addresses
You may need to pay particular attention to the Available Addresses area in the Main tab, where you will define the ports on which the server will accept incoming requests. If you look in your httpd.conf file, you will see this option listed as the Listen directive. By default, Red Hat has the HTTP server listen to port 80 for nonsecure Web communications. If you want to change this, click the Add button beside the Available Addresses area to open the dialog box shown in Figure B. Here, you can define additional ports for accepting requests. You can choose to Listen to all addresses or specify an IP address over which the server will accept connections. To prevent a DNS lookup failure, use an IP address instead of a domain name. You can also edit your entries if you make a mistake.
| Figure B |
 |
| Available addresses |
In the Virtual Hosts tab (Figure C), you can configure the settings for your Web server. The Virtual Hosts tab also enables you to run different servers for different IP addresses, different host names, or different ports on the same Linux machine. A default virtual host is defined, but you can configure this for your own needs. If you need more information about virtual hosts, you can find it here.
| Figure C |
 |
| Virtual Hosts tab |
The options in the Server tab allow you to configure basic server settings, but in most cases, the default settings will be appropriate. Keep in mind that you shouldn't set the User directive to root unless you know what you are doing because you might end up with large security holes in your server. The Performance Tuning tab
The Performance Tuning tab lets you set the maximum number of child server processes you want and configure the Apache HTTP Server options for client connections. In most situations, the default settings will suffice. Be careful about altering these settings, since you might compromise server performance. Also remember that you can't set the Max Number Of Connections to more than 256 without recompiling. This option corresponds to the MaxClients directive. Another minor concern is that if you set the Persistent Connections to a high value, you may cause the server to slow down considerably due to waiting processes. If you notice an appreciable slowness on your system, this is one of the primary places to start looking for the cause. Rest easy
Once you've entered all your settings and you're satisfied that all the configuration changes and additions are correct, you can save your settings. If you decide not to save the configuration, just click Cancel; otherwise, click OK and then click Yes. Your configuration will be saved in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, but remember that this action overwrites any previous httpd.conf file you have saved there. At this point, you should use a good text editor and view the contents of httpd.conf to get familiar with your system configuration. Now that you have entered all the information needed to run your Apache server, you should have fewer sleepless nights.
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