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.TH BOA 1 "Dec 27, 1997" "Version 0.94"
.SH NAME
.B boa \- a single\-tasking high performance http server
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B boa
[ -c server_root ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
Boa is a single-tasking HTTP server. That means that unlike traditional web
servers, it does not fork for each incoming connection, nor does it fork many
copies of itself to handle multiple connections. It internally multiplexes all
of the ongoing HTTP connections, and forks only for CGI programs (which must be
separate processes.) Preliminary tests show Boa is more than twice as fast as
Apache.
.PP
The primary design goals of Boa are speed and security. Security, in the sense
of "can't be subverted by a malicious user", not "fine grained access control
and encrypted communications". Boa is not intended as a feature-packed server;
if you want one of those, check out WN from John Franks. Modifications to Boa
that improve its speed, security, robustness, and portability, are eagerly
sought. Other features may be added if they can be achieved without hurting the
primary goals.
.SH OPTIONS
The
.B -c
option chooses a server root overriding the default SERVER_ROOT #define in
.I defines.h
The server root must hold your local copy of the configuration file
.I boa.conf
.SH FILES
.TP
.I boa.conf
This file is the sole configuration file for Boa. The directives in this file
are defined in the
.B DIRECTIVES
section.
.TP
.I mime.types
The
MimeTypes <filename>
defines what Content-Type Boa will send in an HTTP/1.0
or better transaction.
.SH DIRECTIVES
The Boa configuration file is parsed with a lex/yacc or flex/bison generated
parser. If it reports an error, the line number will be provided; it should
be easy to spot. The syntax of each of these rules is very simple, and they
can occur in any order. Where possible, these directives mimic those of NCSA
httpd 1.3; I (Paul Phillips) saw no reason to introduce gratuitous differences.
.PP
Note: the "ServerRoot" is not in this configuration file. It can be compiled
into the server (see
.I defines.h
) or specified on the command line with the
.B -c
option.
The following directives are contained in the
.I boa.conf
file, and most, but not all, are required.
.TP
Port <integer>
This is the port that Boa runs on. The default port for http servers is 80.
If it is less than 1024, the server must be started as root.
.TP
User <user name or UID>
The name or UID the server should run as. For Boa to attempt this, the
server must be started as root.
.TP
Group <group name or GID>
The group name or GID the server should run as. For Boa to attempt this,
the server must be started as root.
.TP
ServerAdmin <email address>
The email address where server problems should be sent.
Note: this is not currently used.
.TP
ErrorLog <filename>
The location of the error log file. If this does not start with
/, it is considered relative to the server root.
Set to /dev/null if you don't want errors logged.
.TP
AccessLog <filename>
The location of the access log file. If this does not start with /, it is
considered relative to the server root.
Comment out or set to /dev/null (less effective) to disable access logging.
.TP
VerboseCGILogs
This is a logical switch and does not take any parameters.
Comment out to disable.
.TP
ServerName <server_name>
The name of this server that should be sent back to
clients if different than that returned by gethostname.
.Tp
VirtualHost
This is a logical switch and does not take any parameters.
Comment out to disable.
Given DocumentRoot /var/www, requests on interface 'A' or IP 'IP-A'
become /var/www/IP-A.
Example: http://localhost/ becomes /var/www/127.0.0.1
.TP
DocumentRoot <directory>
The root directory of the HTML documents. If this does not start with
/, it is considered relative to the server root.
.TP
UserDir <directory>
The name of the directory which is appended onto a user's home directory if a
~user request is received.
.TP
DirectoryIndex <filename>
Name of the file to use as a pre-written HTML directory index. Please make
and use these files. On the fly creation of directory indexes can be slow.
.TP
DirectoryMaker <directory>
Name of the program used to generate on-the-fly directory listings.
The program must take one or two command-line arguments, the first
being the directory to index (absolute), and the second, which is optional,
contains what Boa would have the "title" of the document be.
Comment out if you don't want on the fly directory listings.
If this does not start with
/, it is considered relative to the server root.
.TP
KeepAliveMax <integer>
Number of KeepAlive requests to allow per connection. Comment out, or set
to 0 to disable keepalive processing.
.TP
KeepAliveTimeout <integer>
Number of seconds to wait before keepalive connections time out.
.TP
MimeTypes <file>
The location of the
.I mime.types
file. If this does not start with /, it is considered relative to
the server root.
.TP
DefaultType <mime type>
MIME type used if the file extension is unknown, or there is no file extension.
.TP
AddType <mime type> <extension> [extension...]
Associates a MIME type with an extension or extensions.
.TP
Redirect, Alias, and ScriptAlias <path1> <path2>
Redirect, Alias, and ScriptAlias all have the same semantics \-\- they
match the beginning of a request and take appropriate action. Use
Redirect for other servers, Alias for the same server, and ScriptAlias to
enable directories for script execution.
Redirect allows you to tell clients about documents which used to exist
in your server's namespace, but do not anymore. This allows you tell
the clients where to look for the relocated document.
Alias aliases one path to another. Of course, symbolic links in the
file system work fine too.
ScriptAlias maps a virtual path to a directory for serving scripts.
.PP
Please see the included
.I boa.conf
for defaults and examples.
.SH HISTORY
Versions 0.91 and 0.91beta of Boa were released by Paul Phillips <psp@well.com>
.PP
Version 0.92 was released by Larry Doolittle on
December 12, 1996.
.PP
Version 0.93 was a development version of 0.94.
.PP
Version 0.94 was released January 1998 by Jon Nelson.
.SH BUGS
There are probably bugs, but we are not aware of any at this time.
.SH AUTHOR
Boa was created by Paul Phillips <psp@well.com>. It is now being maintained and
enhanced by Larry Doolittle
<ldoolitt@jlab.org> and
Jon Nelson <nels0988@tc.umn.edu>.
.PP
Linux is the development platform at the moment, other
OS's are known to work. If you'd like to
contribute to this effort, contact Larry or Jon via e-mail.
.SH LICENSE
This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License, as noted in
each source file.
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