HOW-TOs
Table of Contents
How to increase the operating system limit of file descriptors? How to setup name based virtual hosting? How to setup IP based virtual hosting? How to be mitigate Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks? How to use GZIP compression to save network bandwidth? How to measure web server performance? How to set up an external application (Fast CGI, LSAPI App, Web Server or Servlet Engine)? How to configure PHP support? How to build PHP binary with LiteSpeed SAPI? How to build PHP binary with FCGI SAPI? How to setup PHP Accelerators? How to start CGI, FCGI, LSAPI and PHP in suEXEC mode? How to set up LiteSpeed Web Server as a reverse proxy server? How to setup Servlet/JSP? How to migrate from Apache? How to generate a SSL private key? How to create self-signed certificate? How to get a SSL certificate from certificate issuers? How to configure SSL using the private key and certificate in LiteSpeed web server? How to install Microsoft FrontPage Server Extension 2002 with LiteSpeed web server? How to customize auto index script? How to use AWStats together with LiteSpeed Web Server? How to use the persistent Perl CGI daemon? How to import Apache configuration? How to use piped logger? How to use template to configure a group of virtual hosts with similar configuration?
• How to increase the operating system limit of file descriptors? top
There are system level and process level file descriptor limits in UNIX like operating systems. LiteSpeed server only uses a small number of server processes to serve all clients and each request may need up to 4 file descriptors. Therefore, the maximum number of concurrent requests that the server can handle could be constrained by the process level file descriptor limit. It is important to set this limit to a high value. If the server is started by root user, it will try to adjust this limit automatically based on server configuration when this limit is too low. Otherwise, this limit has to be manually adjusted with root privilege. Use ulimit -a to check current setting of per process file descriptor limit. You need root privilege to change this limit. You may want to put this setting in your startup scripts in order to automatically set the limit after rebooting the machine. Linux kernels: Check the system level limit for open files: more /proc/sys/fs/file-max If it looks low, increase the limit by: echo 40000 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max For kernel 2.2.x, you also need: echo 65535 > /proc/sys/fs/inode-max Then increases the current process limit by: ulimit -n 10000 Note: Normal user can use ulimit -n xxxx to change the limit of current process, at least in Kernel 2.4.x. But you need to add following lines in /etc/security/limits.conf: soft nofile 2048 hard nofile 8192 Solaris 2.4+: The following lines need to be added in /etc/system: * set hard limit on file descriptors: set rlim_fd_max = XXXX * set soft limit on file descriptors: set rlim_fd_cur = XXXX FreeBSD: Add the following line in /boot/loader.conf, set kern.maxfiles=XXXX
• How to setup name based virtual hosting? top
With name based virtual hosting, you can host more web sites than the number of IP addresses you have. In this case, multiple domain names are pointed to same IP address. Use the following guidelines to setup name based virtual hosting. Setup DNS properly. Forward the domain names of your web sites to the IP address used by your web server. This is commonly done by adding an "A" name entry to the DNS zone for the website. Set up in the web administration console: Create a virtual host for each web site. Create listeners. You can create one listener to listen on all local IP addresses. Or you can create multiple listeners with one listener only listening to one specific IP address. Assign virtual host mappings. Go to listener settings, click "Edit" on Virtual Host Mappings table. Check all virtual hosts that should be mapped, and specify the corresponding Domains. Note: your.domain will match both www.your.domain and your.domain. The leading "www." in the domain name will be ignored.
• How to setup IP based virtual hosting? top
IP based virtual hosting requires at least one unique IP address for each web site. One IP address is dedicated to one virtual host. This allows you to visit a virtual host with URL like "http://192.168.0.1/index.html", and the web server will process this request using the corresponding virtual host context. If using SSL, a unique SSL certificate needs to be assigned for each IP based virtual host as well. Allocate at least one IP address for each web site you plan to host. TIP: You can create an IP alias to assign multiple IPs to one network adapter. Configure DNS properly. Assign the domain name to its corresponding IP address. Create listeners. You have two choices: Create one listener that listens on all IPs and configure virtual host mappings to share one listener as above. Another choice is to create one listener for each IP. Assign listener only to the corresponding virtual host with the wild card domain name *. Unique SSL private key and certificate can be assigned to each listener, thus each web site can use its own certificate.
• How to be mitigate Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks? top
LiteSpeed server is capable of reducing and even eliminating the impact of DoS and DDoS attacks at the HTTP protocol level. The following configuration will help against attacks. Under Server Tuning configuration: Set Max Request URL Length, Max Request Header Size, Max Request Body Size, Max Dynamic Response Header Size and Max Dynamic Response Body Size to a value that just above what you really need. This will help to reduce memory usage and identify bad requests quickly. Set Connection Timeout around 30; set Keep-Alive Timeout around 15 or less; set Max Keep-Alive Requests to at least 100. This will help to close dead connections as soon as possible and make connections available to other clients. Under Server Security configuration: Block the IPs that abuse your web server by listing them in the Access Control - Denied List. Use Per Client Throttling Control to control how many concurrent connections are allowed from one IP address. Once the limit is reached, the web server will close newly accepted connections from that IP address immediately and move on to next pending connection. Nowadays, almost all web browsers support persistent connections (multiple requests pipelined through one connection), so the number of connections required is very small. Essentially, one connection is enough. However, some web browsers try to establish additional connections to speed up downloading. Therefore, allowing 4 to 10 connections from one IP is recommended. Less than that will probably affect normal web services. With this per IP limit, the web server can serve more unique clients. The minimum number of unique clients can be derived from Max Connections divided by max connections per client. Enable IP level throttling: Set Outbound Bandwidth greater than 0 (0 will disable throttling). The limit is rounded up to the closest boundary of 4KB/sec units. In this way, your limited network bandwidth will not be used up by a couple of clients with fast network connections; more clients will be served. If you server is flooded by hundreds of requests from different IPs but with same URL, you can create a General Context to block access to that URL. The Context URI should match or include that URL and Accessible is set to No. For example, if the server is pounded with "/foo/bar.html", then you can add context with exact URI=/foo/bar.html, or set URI=/foo/ to block all URLs that start with "/foo/".
• How to use GZIP compression to save network bandwidth? top
LiteSpeed web server can send compressed responses for both static and dynamically generated content. You can configure it on the server GZIP Compression Tuning page through WebAdmin console. Enable Compression setting is the overall controller for both static and dynamic content. When a request for a static file comes in, the web server first looks for the corresponding gzip compressed version in the same directory where the uncompressed file is located. The compressed file will be used only if it is newer and smaller than the original one. If the compressed file does not exist or out of date, the web server can create/update the gzip compressed file automatically if Auto Update Static File is turned on. Because compression is a pretty server intensive, the web server will only compress files with a potentially high compression rate based on following rules: the MIME type of the response body is text; the file size is between Min Static File Size and Max Static File Size. The web server can perform run-time compression for dynamically generated content as well. To turn on compression for dynamic content, both Enable Dynamic Compression and Enable Compression must be set to Yes. Compression Level (Static Content) and Compression Level (Dynamic Content) range from 1 (faster compression) to 9 (better compression). You should tune it based on available hardware resources such as memory and CPU cycles.
• How to measure web server performance? top
First, Make sure your web server is tuned up for the maximum performance. Turn off throttling by setting Outbound Bandwidth to 0. Set the value of Max Keep-Alive Requests to a big number like 100000. Set Max Connections as high as possible. Set Connection Soft Limit and Connection Hard Limit to 1000 or higher in Per Client Throttling Control, depending on how many concurrent connections you need from one IP address. Set Follow Symbolic Link to Yes and Restrained to No for the testing virtual host There are three commonly used tools for benchmark: ApacheBench, Httperf and AutoBench. Using ApacheBench: ApacheBench is a command line performance-testing tool bundled with Apache httpd. It can simulate hundreds of HTTP/1.0 clients simultaneously accessing same resource on the server. You can simply run it with command: ab -n 10000 -c 100 http://localhost:8088/index.html or you can use keep-alive requests by ab -n 10000 -c 100 -k http://localhost:8088/index.html For detailed information, please check Apache document. Using Httperf: You can get httperf from http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/David_Mosberger/httperf.html. Httperf uses HTTP/1.1 protocol by default and always use keep-alive requests. It has more command options, for detailed information please refer to its document. Here is an example: ./httperf --server localhost --port 8088 --uri /index.html --rate 1000 --num-conn 100 --num-call 100 --timeout 50 Using Autobench: Autobench is a simple Perl script calling httperf that automates the benchmark process of a web server. You can get autobench from http://www.xenoclast.org/autobench/For detailed information, please refer to its document. It is not recommended to run the server and testing tool on the same machine, as it does not reflect the usage in real world. And the testing tool share the same CPU with web server, you should take that into account if you do so. It is better to perform the test over a LAN using two or more computers. In order to reveal the actual performance of the web server, you need to make sure that the network and the client machines should not become a bottleneck. It is recommended to perform the test on a Gigabits LAN, or multiple switched 100Mb connections. If you only use one machine to simulate clients, make sure that it has equal or higher power than the server machine. Start the test with small files and increase the file size gradually until the network bandwidth is saturated.
• How to set up an external application (Fast CGI, LSAPI App, Web Server or Servlet Engine)? top
All types of external applications can be set up at either server level or virtual host level. The server level ones can be used by all virtual hosts. Fast CGI and LSAPI applications running on the same machine could be started by the Web Server on demand. We call this type of applications as Local External Applications. Applications that are not started by the Web server are referred as Remote External Applications, even when they are running on the same machine. Servlet Engine has to be started manually no matter whether it runs on the same machine or not. An external application needs to be configured first, then it can be referenced by its name in other places. It is configured under the External Application tab, either at server or virtual host level. For all external applications, you must specify Name, Address and Max Connections. Name is used to reference this app internally. Address is the socket address used by the application, which web server needs to connect to. Max Connections indicates the maximum concurrent connections that the external application would take. For a local external application, you also need to specify Command, Back Log, Instances and Environment (optional). Command is the command that launches the application, optional command parameters can be supplied. Back Log is the queue size of the server socket that it listens to. Instances are the number of copies (instances) that the server will spawn. Environment specifies additional environment variables for the external application. A Multithreaded external application can process multiple requests concurrently within one process. Therefore it is unnecessary to create multiple instances for that kind of external applications. However, most external applications are not multithreaded and each process can only process one request at the same time. In this case, multiple instances have to be created to increase the level of concurrency. Instances can control how many instances (processes) that the web server can spawn. And Max Connections should be set to match the Instances. Some single-threaded Fast CGI process itself can fork children processes to handle multiple requests concurrently, such as PHP Fast CGI implementation. For that type of Fast CGI, set Instances to 1 and use Fast CGI's configuration to control how many children processes should be created. For example, PHP use a special Environment variable PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN for this purpose. External applications cannot be used directly; they have to be configured as either Script Handler or Context handler. When configured as a script handler, the web server will forward a request to it if the request refers to a static file with matching Suffix. When configured as a context handler, the web server will forward a request to it as long as the request's URL matches the Context URI.
• How to configure PHP support? top
PHP is fully supported by LiteSpeed web server out of box, no additional configuration is required. Normally, there is no need to change the default settings. Two types of PHP SAPI interfaces are supported by LiteSpeed: LiteSpeed FastCGI LiteSpeed SAPI is a new PHP SAPI module that communicates with LiteSpeed Web Server based on our LSAPI protocol. LiteSpeed SAPI has similar architecture to the FastCGI SAPI with two major enhancements: upto 50% better performance support for dynamic PHP configuration changes through web server configuration and .htaccess files. Unlike Apache's mod_php that embeds PHP engine inside web server processes, LiteSpeed web server talks to standalone PHP Engine processes via Fast CGI or LSAPI protocol. A pre-built PHP executable with minimum features configured is installed to [lsws_home]/fcgi-bin/php. If additional features are required, you should replace it with your own customized PHP executable. PHP support is configured in two steps: 1. adding an external PHP application; 2. adding a script handler using the PHP application just defined in step 1. PHP application can be defined at server level or virtual host level, application defined at server level is available to all virtual hosts. PHP engine can run on localhost or on a remote machine. When running on local machine, PHP processes can be started by third party FastCGI/LSAPI manager or by the web server itself, the latter is preferred. Before adding/changing PHP application configuration, you need to know which PHP SAPI is built into the PHP binary. Command: [lsws_home]/fcgi-bin/php -v will display the information. For LiteSpeed SAPI, you should define a LSAPI application, for CGI/FCGI SAPI, you should define a FastCGI application. After a PHP application is configured, a Script Handler needs to be configured in order to have PHP script handled by the PHP application. The default Suffix for PHP script is set to php; Type is set to either Fast CGI or LiteSpeed API; Handler Name is set to the name of the PHP application. You can specify multiple suffixes in a comma-separated list like php,php4,phtml. Script Handler can be set at server level or virtual host level. Virtual host level setting overrides the server level setting for the same suffix. There are a few environment variables can be used to customize PHP via LSAPI, for detail information please refer to the README file in php/sapi/litespeed directory. There are several environment variables can be used to customize the PHP FCGI application: PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=XX This controls how many child processes the PHP engine process spawns. You can use Instances or this environment variable to control the concurrency of PHP engine. Max Connections setting should be set to the same value as the number of children processes. PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=XXXX This controls how many requests each child process will handle before exit. It protects against memory leak inside PHP. Web server needs to reestablish a connection with a new child process. So set it as high as possible to increase the performance. FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS=127.0.0.1,192.168.0.1 This controls who can connect to the PHP engine over the network when TCP socket is used. Only 127.0.0.1 and 192.168.0.1 is allowed in the above example. This option is not necessary when PHP engine run on localhost with proper Address setting. Both Unix domain socket and TCP socket can be used when running on localhost, Unix domain socket is preferred for better performance. If TCP socket has to be used, then let PHP only listen on the local loopback interface by setting Address to localhost:XXXX.
• How to build PHP binary with LiteSpeed SAPI? top
Usually, you do not need to build your own PHP binary unless you need some PHP modules that are not built into the pre-built binary. First, you need to download the latest PHP source code. If php/sapi/litespeed/ directory does not exist in the expanded source code tree, you need to download our patch available at http://www.litespeedtech.com/lsapi/ Then, configure PHP with --with-litespeed plus other options you will need. Fast CGI related options --enable-fastcgi--enable-discard-path --disable-path-info-check should not be used together with --with-litespeed. Build PHP binary with make, you should find an executable called "php" under sapi/litespeed/ directory after the compilation succeeds. Then copy the new binary with command cp php/sapi/litespeed/php lsws/fcgi-bin/lsphp. We recommend renaming php to lsphp in order to distinguish it from FastCGI version of PHP binary. There are two environment variables that can be tweaked to control the behavior of LiteSpeed PHP. PHP_LSAPI_CHILDREN (no default) In order to handle multiple requests concurrently, LiteSpeed web server can either spawn multiple PHP processes; or spawn one process, and this process will create a number of child processes to handle multiple requests simultaneously. The web server will create PHP processes specified by Instances in LSAPI application configuration. For one PHP process launched by the server, if PHP_LSAPI_CHILDREN is not set, it will not create any child process; if PHP_LSAPI_CHILDREN is set, it will spawn a number of child processes specified by PHP_LSAPI_CHILDREN. Usually, it should match Max Connections configured for the LSAPI application, and both values should not be set over 100 in most cases. PHP_LSAPI_MAX_REQUESTS (default value: 500) This controls how many requests each child process will handle before exit. When one process exits, another will be created. This tuning is necessary because several PHP functions have been identified having memory leaks. If the PHP processes were left around forever, they could become very inefficient.
• How to build PHP binary with FCGI SAPI? top
Usually there is no need to build your own PHP binary unless you need some particular PHP modules that are in the pre-built binary. If you need to build your own PHP binary, see the following steps: download the latest PHP distribution package; For PHP 4.3.4 and later releases, a small change should be made in source code sapi/cgi/cgi_main.c around line 858 and 862.
    	if (env_path_info) {
    		SG(request_info).request_uri = env_path_info;
    	} else {
    		SG(request_info).request_uri = env_script_name;
    	}
Should be commented out and replaced with the code in the else clause and look like:
            SG(request_info).request_uri = env_script_name;
Then configure php with --enable-fastcgi--enable-discard-path --disable-path-info-check along with other options you need. Please disregard the statements about --enable-discard-path --disable-path-info-check options in PHP documentation and README.FastCGI, as they are only applicable to Apache. After PHP is successfully built, replace the stock PHP binary coming with the package by command: cp -f sapi/cgi/php [lsws_home]/fcgi-bin/php . The pre-built PHP executable is also configured with option --with-config-file-path=../conf, in this way different php.ini can be used for different PHP engine. It is just a recommendation. The default php.ini is located at [lsws_home]/conf/php.ini.
• How to setup PHP Accelerators? top
"PHP accelerator", "Turck MMCache" and "Alternative PHP Cache (APC)" have been tested and work well with LiteSpeed. "Zend accelerator" should work fine. For all accelerators, the PHP configuration file - php.ini should be changed. The default php.ini for the pre-built PHP engine is located at [lsws_home]/conf/php.ini. Litespeed installer can enable "Turck MMCache" or "APC" with our pre-built binaries. If you want to enable, disable or switch after installation, just run [lsws_home]/admin/misc/enable_phpa.sh. For detailed information regarding how to install the PHP Accelerators, please follow the documentation from respective vendors.
• How to start CGI, FCGI, LSAPI and PHP in suEXEC mode? top
When a script is started in "suEXEC" mode, the script can run on behalf of a user other than the user that web server process running as, this is an important security feature in shared hosting environment which minimize possible damage of a vulnerable script to whom this script belongs to. It is very easy to turn on "suEXEC" in LiteSpeed Web Server, what you need to do is to set "CGI set UID mode" to "DocRoot UID" when you create a virtual host, then change the owner of the document root directory to target user. For traditional CGI script, you can also use "CGI File UID", but "DocRoot UID" is recommended as it works with all scripts unless the user ID of the CGI script is different from document root user ID.
• How to set up LiteSpeed Web Server as a reverse proxy server? top
LiteSpeed Web Server can be used as a transparent reverse proxy server running in front of any web server or application server that supports HTTP protocol, to help improve the scalability, performance and security of the whole system. Please set up in the WebAdmin console according to the following steps: Define an External Application with Type Web Server. Set Address to the IP address and port used by the backend web server. Two choices: Define a Proxy Context with Web Server set to the External Application just defined. Define a Script Handler with Type Web Server, and Handler Name set to the External Application just defined. For example, you may want to have Apache with mod_perl to handle Perl scripts instead of running them as CGI, assuming Apache is running on the same server machine on port 8080, pointing to the same Document Root. First, define an External Application, set Type to Web Server, Name to ApachePerl and Address to localhost:8080. Then define a Script Handler, set Suffix to pl, Type to Web Server and Handler Name to ApachePerl.
• How to setup Servlet/JSP? top
LiteSpeed web server supports Servlet/JSP through AJPv13 protocol. You can choose a Servlet engine as long as it is AJPv13 compatible. Please use the following guidelines to set up: Install an AJPv13 compatible Servlet engine. Tomcat 3.x, 4.x and Jetty 4.x support AJPv13 protocol. The AJPv13 compatible connector of the Servlet engine must be enabled. Please refer to respective documents coming with the Servlet engine. Make sure the Servlet engine works properly through their build-in Http Server. Make the web application files available to web server. If the Servlet engine runs on a different machine, make a local copy of the web application files. Skip this step if the Servlet engine runs on the same machine. Only the specific web application directory is needed, not the whole web-apps/ directory. If the web application is packed in a war file, you need to expand it. The WEB-INF/web.xml must exist along with the static files and JSP files. The Java class files under WEB-INF/ can be removed. Configure the Servlet engine using web administration console. Under the External Application tab at server level or virtual host level add a Servlet engine. Make sure the Address matches the AJP setting in Servlet engine. Create a Java Web App Context under Context tab of the virtual host. The Context URI should match the URI used by the Servlet engine. Set Location to the directory of web application. Select the Servlet Engine just created. Set Script Handler for JSP. Add a Script Handler for Suffix jsp for the virtual host. Set Type to Servlet Engine and set the Handler Name to the Servlet engine just created.
• How to migrate from Apache? top
If your web site does not depend on any apache modules that the equivalent is not currently available in LiteSpeed web server, the migration is pretty easy. It is recommended to run LiteSpeed web server parallel to Apache first. Change the user and group to the same setting as Apache by running install.sh if the server is started by root. Attention: Since 2.2 release, LSWS can use Apache httpd.conf directly without duplicating vhost configuration in LSWS, you should try that first, for more information, please checkout our Wiki pages. Create a virtual host and configure it to the same settings: Set the Document Root to the same directory used by Apache (be careful about the permission); Add CGI Context if CGI is used in Apache; Set up PHP or Servlet engine in External Application if needed. Create General Context to match the "Alias" in Apache. Restart web server and test the setup by sending same requests to both servers. After verifying that LiteSpeed web server is working properly, you can stop Apache and change the listener setting to use the TCP port that Apache used.
• How to generate a SSL private key? top
OpenSSL tool kit is required to generate private key. Install OpenSSL if it is not installed already. Create RSA private key for your web server by using command openssl genrsa -out server.key 1024 You can create a Triple-DES encrypted private key file by using openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.skey 1024 You need to give a password (pass-phase) for the private key file. You will be prompt for the password when the private key file is used every time. LiteSpeed web server only support private key files without encryption. You probably think it is not safe for the private key. Well, in theory, it is not as safe as the encrypt version. But in reality, it is impossible to let user input password for the SSL keys whenever the server starts or restarts. Some web server can save the password somehow and automate the pass-phase when the server starts, but it is only as good as the machine is not compromised unless your password is hardware protected. The private key file along with the certificate file should be placed in a directory that is only readable by whom the server running as. If you generated the encrypted key file, the pass-phase can be removed with the following command: openssl rsa -in server.skey -out server.key 1024 in above commands is the length of the private key in bits. The bigger private key is more secure. You can create bigger private key like 2048 bit. However, if you plan to get your certificate from certificate issuer, you may have to use 1024 bit private key as it is the biggest key they can process, check with the issuer first. For more information about creating SSL private key please visit http://www.openssl.org/docs/HOWTO/keys.txt
• How to create self-signed certificate? top
Self-signed certificates can be used to secure the web administration console. It is not recommended for a public web site. When you use a self-signed certificate, the browser will ask the user whether to accept the certificate or not as self-signed certificates are not trusted by the browser. Create your private key. Create the self-signed certificate with the command, openssl req -new -x509 -key server.key -out server.crt -days 365 You will be asked for more information about your organization and web site. Please give correct information. You should give valid domain names of your web site when you are asked for Common Name but not any aliases. To determine the valid domain name, you can use commands such as nslookup, dig or host. For example, if the web site can be accessed via both http://foo.bar and http://www.foo.bar, usually foo.bar is the valid domain name (canonical name), www.foo.bar is an alias; foo.bar should be used for the Common Name.
• How to get a SSL certificate from certificate issuers? top
You need to generate a certificate request from your private key and send the request to a certificate issuer, like VeriSign or Thawte. The certificate issuer will sign the request and send back the certificate. To generate a certificate request: Create your private key. Create the certificate request with command, openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr You will be asked for more information about your organization and web site. Please give correct information. You should give valid domain names of your web site when you are asked for Common Name but not any aliases. To determine the valid domain name, you can use commands such as nslookup, dig or host. For example, if the web site can be accessed via both http://foo.bar and http://www.foo.bar, usually foo.bar is the valid domain name (canonical name), www.foo.bar is an alias; foo.bar should be used for the Common Name.
• How to configure SSL using the private key and certificate in LiteSpeed web server? top
After you get your certificate, you can configure SSL Private Key & Certificate for your web server. Create a listener with Secure set to Yes. The official port for SSL is 443, but other port can be used too. Click on the newly created listener, then go to the SSL Private Key & Certificate. Then edit the Private Key File and Certificate File. Give the path of the SSL private key file and certificate file in the pop-up window. Click "Finish" button to save your changes. You can specify SSL Version and Encryption Level on the same page. Set Virtual Host Mappings in listener General tab. In the pop-up window, select the Virtual Host that you want to access through this listener and input the valid Domains Click "Apply Changes" link below the banner. If the new listener uses Port number less than 1024 click Graceful Restart in Actions, otherwise just click Reload - Server. Test your SSL configuration with your browser by accessing https://your.domain:your_port/. The "s" after "http" at the beginning of the address indicates the browser to use SSL protocol. If you use a self-signed certificate, the browser will prompt you to accept the certificate. Otherwise the browser will accept the certificate automatically without bothering you. Now you should be able to see your web pages loaded through the secured SSL connection.
• How to install Microsoft FrontPage Server Extension 2002 with LiteSpeed web server? top
Please follow the following steps: Download the corresponding Microsoft FrontPage Server Extension for your platform from rtr.com, save it to directory lsws/add-ons/frontpage/. run FrontPage installation script as root user: lsws/admin/misc/fp_install.sh Restart LSWS with root user account. Now you can enable FrontPage extension for your web site. The most important configuration is the Domain Names, it must match the domain name part of the URL that you used to access the web page, and otherwise it will not work. Port number should be specified, example: your.domain.name:80 If you enable FrontPage Server Extension for one virtual host from LiteSpeed web admin console, LiteSpeed Web Server will try to install it to the document root of that virtual host when restart web server. If it is successful, you can access admin page of that virtual host from: http://your.doamin.name/_vti_bin/_vti_adm/fpadmcgi.exe The default login username is "admin" and password is "fp123456". You should change the password immediately after the extension is enabled. If you changed Domain Names setting, you need to reinstall FrontPage extension. What you need to do is just remove all "_vti_..." files under the document root of your web site, then restart web server. If you want to setup Admin Page for all virtual hosts, run the following command at command line as root user: /usr/local/frontpage/version5.0/bin/owsadm.exe -o setadminport -p <PORT> -s <path_to_/lsws/add-ons/frontage/conf/httpd.conf> -username <USERNAME> -pw <PASSWD> Then add a virtual host with Document Root pointing to /usr/local/frontpage/version5.0/admin-exes/ from the web admin console. Now you can manage FrontPage Server Extension for all virtual hosts from this virtual host.
• How to customize auto index script? top
LiteSpeed web server uses an external script to generate the index page for a directory with no index file on the fly. The URI to the auto index script is configurable by field Auto Index URI at virtual host level under general tab. Whenever a directory with no index file is accessed, LiteSpeed Web server will perform an internal redirect to that URI. In order to share the script among all virtual hosts, a General Context with URI /_autoindex/ and Root $SERVER_ROOT/share/autoindex/ is automatically created for every virtual host. A default php script is provided with same Look and Feel as Apache's mod_autoindex. The script is located at lsws/share/autoindex/default.php Permission is granted to copy and change the default auto index script. It is recommended to make changes on a copy of the default script, the default script will be overwritten during next upgrade. When you write your own script, just remember that the path to the directory to be indexed is passed to the script in a CGI environment variable: "LS_AI_PATH". The script can be placed at anywhere you like, but if you want to share it among all virtual hosts, just place it under lsws/share/autoindex/ directory.
• How to use AWStats together with LiteSpeed Web Server? top
AWStats can be used as an add-on module of LiteSpeed web server. It has been seamlessly integrated into our web administration console, and the configuration and statistical updates has been automated as well. To install AWStats as an add-on module, please run script: lsws/admin/misc/awstats_install.sh This script will try to download the latest AWStats package from www.awstats.org, expand it under lsws/add-ons/ directory and create a symbolic link from "./awstats-x.x" to "awstats". If it fails to download for any reason, you can manually do this step as well. Next step is to enable AWStats add-on module for the virtual host that you would have AWStats analyze its access log. From the Web Admin console, just select the virtual host on left, click "Add-on" tab on the right, then fill in configurations in "AWStats Integration" table. Configurations are Update Mode: Disabled, Static or Dynamic. Working Directory: The directory to be used to save AWStats configuration and statistical results. AWStats URI: Where the statistical results can be accessed. Site Domain: The main domain name of the virtual host. Site Aliases: All possible add-on domains, aliases and IP addresses. Update Interval: Hourly or Daily. Update Offset: When to start the update. Secured Connection: the result is access via HTTP or HTTPS. Authentication Realm: To protect the result with authentication. After applying the configuration changes, you can access the statistical results produced by AWStats by clicking "statistics" action link for that virtual host under "Server Manager" page. Customize AWStats configuration file: AWStats configuration file is generated automatically based on a model configuration file /conf/awstats.model.conf, which is copied from lsws/add-ons/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/awstats.model.conf. The following configuration parameters are populated by LiteSpeed: "LogFile", "LogType", "LogFormat", "SiteDomain", "HostAliases", "DirData", "DirConfig" and "DirIcons". Other parameters can be customized by changing awstats.model.conf. NOTE: Never edit the destination configuration file as it is always overwritten by LiteSpeed before invoking AWStats updates.
• How to use the persistent Perl CGI daemon? top
The configuration of Perl CGI daemon is similar to that of PHP configuration. You need to configure it as a Fast CGI application, and then add a script handler for "pl" or whatever suffixes used for Perl scripts. The Perl CGI daemon is located at lsws/fcgi-bin/lsperld.fpl. As "lsperld.fpl" utilizes the Fast CGI interface, you need to install Perl Fast CGI module FCGI.pm first. It is available at http://www.fastcgi.com or through CPAN. The following command can be used to install FCGI.pm through CPAN: perl -MCPAN -e 'install FCGI' In order to deal with increasing memory usage of a persistent process, number of requests that a Perl daemon can process is controlled by an environment variable FCGI_PERL_MAX_REQ, default is 500. For example: FCGI_PERL_MAX_REQ=1000.
• How to import Apache configuration? top
An Apache configuration migration tool - lsws/admin/misc/apimport.sh is available to help you migrate existing Apache configurations. If you did not import your Apache configuration during installation, just run the migration tool from command line: lsws/admin/misc/apimport.sh /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf Then you may want to log into web admin console, check and fine tune the configuration, then restart LiteSpeed Web Server. For production web sites, it is recommended to test imported web sites on a different port (bind imported virtual hosts to other listeners).
• How to use piped logger? top
A piped logger is a standalone application that receives access log data sent by web server through a pipe on its STDIN stream. This makes flexible logging possible, like logging into a database. Here is a simple piped logger written in Perl:
    #!/usr/bin/perl
    open LOG, '>> ../logs/pipedaccess.log';
    select LOG;
    $| = 1;
    while (<>)
    {
      print LOG $_;
    }
It will receive data from STDIN and append to file pipedaccess.log. To use a piped logger, first, you need to define an external application with type "Piped Logger", then go to "Access Log" configuration and select the "Piped logger" from the drop down list. Once a piped logger is set, access log data will no logger be written to the access log file.
• How to use template to configure a group of virtual hosts with similar configuration? top
When you host multiple web sites on one server, you may find that most of them have similar configuration. To add a new virtual host, you have to duplicate existing configuration and then just make some minor changes. Also if you need to change one common configuration, you have to edit all the configuration files one by one. It is annoying and error-prone. LiteSpeed provides this excellent feature: virtual host template, which will reduce the burden of a web master in above situations. For example, if all web sites are stored on a hard drive like below: Each web site has it own root directory under /wwwroot directory. Web site's root directory is named as its qualified domain name, for example, directory for "www.example.com" is /wwwroot/www.example.com/ Document root is "html/" sub-directory under the web site's root directory. For "www.example.com", it is /wwwroot/www.example.com/html/ The directory for CGI scripts is "cgi-bin/" sub-directory under the web site's root directory. For "www.example.com", it is /wwwroot/www.example.com/cgi-bin/ The virtual host template should be configured like below: "Virtual host root" should be set to "/wwwroot/$VH_NAME/" "Document Root" should be set to "$VH_ROOT/html/" or "/wwwroot/$VH_NAME/html/", the former is preferred. To add a "CGI" context, set "URI" to "/cgi-bin/", set "Path" to "$VH_ROOT/cgi-bin/" or "/wwwroot/$VH_NAME/cgi-bin", the former is preferred. If all web sites are available on port 80, you can create a listener bind to all interfaces on port 80 and add the name of that listener to "Mapped Listeners" configuration. Then the rest you need to do is to configure a member virtual host for each web site. Properties for a member virtual host are: Virtual Host Name: This probably the only property need to be set if virtual host root can be somehow determined by it (like naming the directory after it, and the domain name is same as the virtual host name). Domain: need to be set when the qualified domain name of the web site is different from "Virtual Host Name". Aliases: need to be set if there are aliases for this web site. Virtual Host Root: The root directory for a web site, only need to be set when it cannot be determined by "Virtual Host Name". For "www.example.com", because "Virtual Host Name" is equal to "Domain" and the virtual host root directory is named after "Virtual Host Name", and there is no alias, so all you need to do is to set "Virtual Host Name" to "www.example.com". If you organize all your new virtual hosts in this way, then all you need to do is to add a member virtual host with a proper "Virtual host name".
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