help undestanding the defaults, and cutting the crap :)

[ultrus]

Hello.

I'm using a recent ubuntu distribution to host an as-needed website, a set of tools for an online game. After installing LAMP and restarting Apache, everything works (it even says "It works!" when I visit the website).

 

Now I need to understand the default setup. I have general questions below each chunk.

 

...
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
...

When does this person get an email?

 

...
        DocumentRoot /var/www/
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>
...

Is <Directory /> really /var/www/ , because it mentions DocumentRoot /var/www/ above? If so, why is there a directive for / and /var/www/ ?

 

...
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
        <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
                AllowOverride None
                Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>
...

I don't use CGI scripts. Do you think it is safe to remove this?

 

...
        ServerSignature On
...

Any bad things happen if this is Off? Do I need to show the server signature?

 

...
    Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
    <Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
    </Directory>
...

Can someone access http://myWebsiteIP/doc/ , or is this for some other use. I could probably remove this as well?

 

Also, I'll be allowing mod_rewrites in /var/www/game/ . I'm guessing I need to create a directive to allow this? Maybe something like:

 

        <Directory /var/www/game/>
                AllowOverride All
        </Directory>

 

I appreciate any feedback you can provide. In the meantime I'll keep playing with it and doing research.

 

Thank you,