B Frequently Asked Questions

B.1 Creating Application-specific Error Pages

Oracle HTTP Server has a default content handler for dealing with errors. You can use the ErrorDocument directive to override the defaults.

B.2 Offering HTTPS to ISP (Virtual Host) Customers

For HTTP, Oracle HTTP Server supports two types of virtual hosts: name-based and IP-based. HTTPS supports only IP-based virtual hosts.

If you are using IP-based virtual hosts for HTTP, then the customer has a virtual server listening on port 80 of a per-customer IP address. To provide HTTPS for these customers, simply add an additional virtual host per user listening on port 4443 of that same per-customer IP address and use SSL directives to specify the per-customer SSL characteristics. Note that each customer can have their own wallet and server certificate.

If you are using name-based virtual hosts for HTTP, each customer has a virtual server listening on port 80 of a shared IP address. To provide HTTPS for those customers, you can add a single shared IP virtual host listening on port 4443 of the shared IP address. All customers will share the SSL configuration, including the wallet and ISP's server certificate.

B.3 Using Oracle HTTP Server as Cache

You can use Oracle HTTP Server as a cache by setting the ProxyRequests to "On" and CacheRoot directives.

B.4 Using Different Language and Character Set Versions of Document

You can use multiviews, a general name given to the Apache server's ability to provide language and character-specific document variants in response to a request.

B.5 Using OracleAS Web Cache as Front-end

You can use directives such as ExpiresActive, ExpiresByType, ExpiresDefault, to set the length of time that any cache existing between the client and the Web server will cache the returned Web pages.

B.6 Sending Proxy Sensitive Requests to HTTP Server Behind a Firewall

You should use the Proxy directives, and not the Cache directives, to send proxy sensitive requests across firewalls.

B.7 Oracle HTTP Server Version Number

Oracle HTTP Server is based on Apache version 1.3.31.

B.8 Applying Apache Security patches to Oracle HTTP Server

You cannot apply the Apache security patches to Oracle HTTP Server for the following reasons:

• Oracle tests and appropriately modifies security patches before releasing them to Oracle HTTP Server users.

• In many cases those alerts may not be applicable, for example, openSSL alerts, since Oracle has removed those components from the stack in use.

• Oracle releases these patches soon enough that the time-delay impact of getting the patch from Oracle versus open source organization should be minimal and the benefit with respect to supportability, tremendous.

B.9 Compressing Output from Oracle HTTP Server

In general, Oracle recommends the use of OracleAS Web Cache for this purpose. There are other freeware modules, such as mod_gzip that may be plugged in for this purpose, but their use is not supported. When using these, there may be an error message with respect to EAPI, but in general that can be ignored.

B.10 Supporting PHP

mod_php is fully supported in Release 2 (10.2).

B.11 Creating Namespace that Works Across Firewalls, Clusters, Web Cache

The general idea is that all servers in a distributed Web site should agree on a single URL namespace. Every server serves some part of that namespace, and is able to redirect or proxy requests for URLs that it does not serve to a server that is "closer" to that URL. For example, your namespaces could be the following:

/app1/login.html
/app1/catalog.html
/app1/dologin.jsp
/app2/orderForm.html
/apps/placeOrder.jsp

We could initially map this namespace to two Web servers by putting app1 on server1 and app2 on server2. Server1's configuration might look like the following:

Redirect permanent /app2 http://server2/app2
Alias /app1 /myApps/application1
<Directory /myApps/application1>
  ...
</Directory>

Server2's configuration is complementary. If you decide to partition the namespace by content type (HTML on server, JSP on server2), change server configuration and move files around, but do not have to make changes to the application itself. The resulting configuration of server1 might look like the following:

RedirectMatch permanent (.*) \.jsp$ http://server2/$1.jsp
AliasMatch ^/app(.*) \.html$ /myPages/application$1.html
<DirectoryMatch "^/myPages/application\d">
  ...
</DirectoryMatch>

Note that the amount of actual redirection can be minimized by configuring a hardware load balancer like F5 system's BigIP to send requests to server1 or server2 based on the URL.

B.12 Protecting Web Site From Hackers

There are many attacks, and new attacks are invented everyday. The following are some general guidelines for securing your site. You can never be completely secure, but you can avoid being an easy target.

• Use a commercial firewall, such as Checkpoint FW-1 or Cisco PIX between your ISP and your Web server. Recognize, however, that not all hackers are outside your organization.

• Use switched ethernet to limit the amount of traffic a compromised server can sniff. Use additional firewalls between Web server machines and highly sensitive internal servers running database and enterprise applications.

• Remove unnecessary network services such as RPC, Finger, telnet from your server machine.

• Carefully validate all input from Web forms. Be especially wary of long input strings and input that contains non-printable characters, HTML tags, or javascript tags.

• Encrypt or randomize the contents of cookies that contain sensitive information. For example, it should be difficult to guess a valid sessionID to prevent a hacker from hijacking a valid session.

• Check often for security patches for all your system and application software, and install them as soon as possible. Be sure these patches come from bona fide sources; download from trusted sites and verify the cryptographic checksum.

• Use an intrusion detection package to monitor for defaced Web pages, viruses, and presence of "rootkits" that indicate hackers have broken in. If possible, mount system executables and Web content on read-only file systems.

• Have a "forensic analysis" package on hand to capture evidence of a break in as soon as detected. This aids in prosecution of the hackers.