Apache problems

[R Scott Belford]

Here's the thing.  When you are at home, your computer already knows 
that you have named it home.happy.  It stores this information in a 
little file in /etc called hosts.  You type home.happy in your browser 
window, and your os knows that name is the local apache page.  If you 
had other machines in your network that you wanted to access by name 
rather than the ip address, you could put them this file.  (You probably 
understand that an ip address is kind of like a phone number for the 
inernet world.)  Then when you typed their name (I have one named debby 
who runs debian), your browser knows to read your /etc/hosts file to see 
what ip address to "call" debby at.  This works on your local network 
because you are at home using private ip addresses.

The internet is too big for everyone to have all the computers listed in 
their own personal /etc/hosts file.   Not everyone has an /etc/hosts 
file.  It is too hard to remember the ip address for yahoo.  As a 
result, if you own a "public" domain, meaning you can reach it from 
anywhere, you must have its name hosted on what is called a Domain Name 
Server.  These are the computers around the world that people like your 
isp maintain.  When you type the name of the site you want, your os is 
set to check a DNS to see where in the heck to find this site (by ip 
address.)

So, why can't you type home.happy at work and get your machine?  
Home.happy is not a public address, primarily.  Your browser checks a 
DNS for it, and your DNS says "hey, never heard of it."  You can reach 
it by ip address, though.  Your isp owns a big block of public IP 
addresses to dynamically or randomly assign its customers.  If you have 
a cable modem, it is dynamically assigned.   If you have dsl, it may be 
statically assigned.  If you dialup, it is dynamically assigned.  Run 
ipconfig to see what your's is.  Type http://[your ip address] and 
you'll get your machine (if it wasn't reassigned on your way to work or 
if port 80 isn't blocked by your isp.)  You can also register a domain 
of your choice, name your computer that, have a dns tell the world what 
ip address to find you at, and pow, you are connected to home by way of 
the domain of your choice.

scott


On Friday, January 11, 2002, at 02:20  PM, Rodney Kanno wrote:

> I am opening up internet explorer and then typing in "home.happy/web" 
> in the address bar. Is there another way of getting my webpage?
>  
> Rodney
>  
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: R Scott Belford
> To: Linux & Unix Advocates & Users
> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 2:00 PM
> Subject: [luau] Re: Apache problems
>
> I have to wonder this, when you are at work, what are you typing in to 
> your browser in order to reach your home site?
>
> scott
>
> On Friday, January 11, 2002, at 11:33 AM, Rodney Kanno wrote:
>
> I installed Apache and am not able to connect from a computer outside 
> (ex. work). I have tried changing the port numbers as suggessted in the 
> FAQ from the APache website, no luck. I have also tried setting the 
> server name as suggested, but still no luck. Doing a status report 
> gives me the following;
>  
> [root at home happy]# /usr/sbin/apachectl extendedstatus
>  
> Looking up localhost
> Making HTTP connection to localhost
>  
> Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host.
>  
> lynx: Can't access startfile http://localhost/server-status
>  
> ############################################################################## 
>                     
> Apache Server Status for home.happy
> Server Version: Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.22 
> (MandrakeLinux/1.1mdk) mod_perl/1.26
> Server Built: Nov 5 2001 
> 11:59:24     _________________________________________________________________
>  
>    Current Time: Friday, 11-Jan-2002 11:23:13 HST
>    Restart Time: Friday, 11-Jan-2002 11:23:08 HST
>    Parent Server Generation: 0
>    Server uptime: 5 seconds
>    1 requests currently being processed, 3 idle servers
>  
> W___............................................................
> ................................................................
> ................................................................
> ................................................................
>  
>    Scoreboard Key:
>    "_" Waiting for Connection, "S" Starting up, "R" Reading Request,
>    "W" Sending Reply, "K" Keepalive (read), "D" DNS Lookup,
>    "L" Logging, "G" Gracefully finishing, "." Open slot with no current
>    process
> #########################################################################
> #####
> [root at home happy]#
>  
> Any ideas what could be wrong with my setup? I haven't registered the 
> hostname with any services, do I have to do this to get this working?
>  
> Rodney
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to luau as: scott at belford.net
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to $subst('Email.Unsub')
>
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to luau as: scott at belford.net
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to $subst('Email.Unsub')
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 5133 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20020111/fbf8a270/attachment-0001.bin>