.TH BOA 8 "Jan 22 2000" "Version 0.94"
.SH NAME
.B boa \- a single\-tasking high performance http server
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B boa
.RB [ -c 
.IR server_root ] 
.RB [ -r 
.IR chroot ] 
.RB [ -d ]
.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
.IP \fB-d\fR 
instruct Boa not to fork itself (non-daemonize).

.IP "\fB-c \fIserver_root\fR"
choose 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

.IP "\fB-r \fIchroot\fR"
instruct Boa where to chdir and chroot to.  The chdir/chroot
is done before the configuration file is read, or any log
files are opened.

.SH FILES
.TP
\fBboa.conf\fR \- the sole configuration file for Boa.  
The directives in this file are defined in the 
.B DIRECTIVES
section.

.TP
\fBmime.types\fR \- 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; We 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
PidFile <filename>
Where to put the pid of the process.
Comment out to write no pid file.
Note: Because Boa drops privileges at startup, and the
pid file is written by the UID/GID before doing so, Boa
does not attempt removal of the pid file.
.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
CGILog <filename>
The location of the CGI error log file.  If this does not start with /, it 
is considered relative to the server root. If specified, this is the file 
that the stderr of CGIs is tied to, *instead* of to the ErrorLog.
.TP
CGIumask <umask>
The CGIumask is set immediately before execution of the CGI.
The default value is 027. The number must be interpretable
unambiguously by the C function strtol. No base is specified,
so one may use a hexadecimal, decimal, or octal number if 
it is prefixed accordingly.
.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
VHostRoot <directory>
The root location for all virtually hosted data
Comment out to disable.
Incompatible with 'Virtualhost' and 'DocumentRoot'!!
Given VHostRoot /var/www, requests to host foo.bar.com,
where foo.bar.com is ip a.b.c.d,
become /var/www/a.b.c.d/foo.bar.com 
Hostnames are "cleaned", and must conform to the rules
specified in rfc1034, which are be summarized here:

Hostnames must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, 
and have as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen.
Hostnames must not exceed 63 characters in length.
.TP
DefaultVHost <hostname>
Define this in order to have a default hostname when the client does not
specify one, if using VirtualHostName. If not specified, the word
"default" will be used for compatibility with older clients.
.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. Set to /dev/null if you do not want to load a mime types 
file. Do *not* comment out (better use AddType!)
.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
Like the Linux kernel, even numbered versions are "stable", and odd numbered
versions are "unstable", or rather, "development".
Versions 0.91 and 0.91beta of Boa were released by Paul Phillips <paulp@go2net.com>
.PP
Version 0.92 was released by Larry Doolittle on 
December 12, 1996.
.PP
Version 0.93 was the development version of 0.94. 
.PP
Version 0.94 was released 22 Jan 2000.
.SH BUGS
There are probably bugs, but we are not aware of any at this time.
.SH AUTHOR
Boa was created by Paul Phillips <paulp@go2net.com>. 
It is now being maintained and enhanced by Larry Doolittle
<ldoolitt@boa.org> and Jon Nelson <jnelson@boa.org>.
.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.