AcceptFilter Directive

This directive enables operating system specific optimizations for a listening socket by the Protocol type. The basic premise is for the kernel to not send a socket to the server process until either data is received or an entire HTTP Request is buffered. Only FreeBSD's Accept Filters and Linux's more primitive TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT are currently supported.

The default values on FreeBSD are:

The httpready accept filter buffers entire HTTP requests at the kernel level. Once an entire request is received, the kernel then sends it to the server. See the accf_http(9) man page for more details. Since HTTPS requests are encrypted, only the accf_data(9) filter is used.

The default values on Linux are:

Linux's TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT does not support buffering http requests. Any value besides none will enable TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT on that listener. For more details see the Linux tcp(7) man page.

Using none for an argument will disable any accept filters for that protocol. This is useful for protocols that require a server send data first, such as nntp:

See also

• Protocol

AcceptPathInfo Directive

This directive controls whether requests that contain trailing pathname information that follows an actual filename (or non-existent file in an existing directory) will be accepted or rejected. The trailing pathname information can be made available to scripts in the PATH_INFO environment variable.

For example, assume the location /test/ points to a directory that contains only the single file here.html. Then requests for /test/here.html/more and /test/nothere.html/more both collect /more as PATH_INFO.

The three possible arguments for the AcceptPathInfo directive are:

Off

A request will only be accepted if it maps to a literal path that exists. Therefore a request with trailing pathname information after the true filename such as /test/here.html/more in the above example will return a 404 NOT FOUND error.

On

A request will be accepted if a leading path component maps to a file that exists. The above example /test/here.html/more will be accepted if /test/here.html maps to a valid file.

Default

The treatment of requests with trailing pathname information is determined by the handler responsible for the request. The core handler for normal files defaults to rejecting PATH_INFO requests. Handlers that serve scripts, such as cgi-script and isapi-handler, generally accept PATH_INFO by default.

The primary purpose of the AcceptPathInfo directive is to allow you to override the handler's choice of accepting or rejecting PATH_INFO. This override is required, for example, when you use a filter, such as INCLUDES, to generate content based on PATH_INFO. The core handler would usually reject the request, so you can use the following configuration to enable such a script:

AccessFileName Directive

While processing a request, the server looks for the first existing configuration file from this list of names in every directory of the path to the document, if distributed configuration files are enabled for that directory. For example:

Before returning the document /usr/local/web/index.html, the server will read /.acl, /usr/.acl, /usr/local/.acl and /usr/local/web/.acl for directives unless they have been disabled with:

See also

• AllowOverride
• Configuration Files
• .htaccess Files

AddDefaultCharset Directive

This directive specifies a default value for the media type charset parameter (the name of a character encoding) to be added to a response if and only if the response's content-type is either text/plain or text/html. This should override any charset specified in the body of the response via a META element, though the exact behavior is often dependent on the user's client configuration. A setting of AddDefaultCharset Off disables this functionality. AddDefaultCharset On enables a default charset of iso-8859-1. Any other value is assumed to be the charset to be used, which should be one of the IANA registered charset values for use in MIME media types. For example:

AddDefaultCharset should only be used when all of the text resources to which it applies are known to be in that character encoding and it is too inconvenient to label their charset individually. One such example is to add the charset parameter to resources containing generated content, such as legacy CGI scripts, that might be vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks due to user-provided data being included in the output. Note, however, that a better solution is to just fix (or delete) those scripts, since setting a default charset does not protect users that have enabled the "auto-detect character encoding" feature on their browser.

See also

• AddCharset

AddOutputFilterByType Directive

This directive activates a particular output filter for a request depending on the response MIME-type. Because of certain problems discussed below, this directive is deprecated. The same functionality is available using mod_filter.

The following example uses the DEFLATE filter, which is provided by mod_deflate. It will compress all output (either static or dynamic) which is labeled as text/html or text/plain before it is sent to the client.

If you want the content to be processed by more than one filter, their names have to be separated by semicolons. It's also possible to use one AddOutputFilterByType directive for each of these filters.

The configuration below causes all script output labeled as text/html to be processed at first by the INCLUDES filter and then by the DEFLATE filter.

See also

• AddOutputFilter
• SetOutputFilter
• filters

AllowEncodedSlashes Directive

The AllowEncodedSlashes directive allows URLs which contain encoded path separators (%2F for / and additionally %5C for \ on accordant systems) to be used in the path info.

With the default value, Off, such URLs are refused with a 404 (Not found) error.

With the value On, such URLs are accepted, and encoded slashes are decoded like all other encoded characters.

With the value NoDecode, such URLs are accepted, but encoded slashes are not decoded but left in their encoded state.

Turning AllowEncodedSlashes On is mostly useful when used in conjunction with PATH_INFO.

See also

• AcceptPathInfo

AllowOverride Directive

When the server finds an .htaccess file (as specified by AccessFileName), it needs to know which directives declared in that file can override earlier configuration directives.

When this directive is set to None, then .htaccess files are completely ignored. In this case, the server will not even attempt to read .htaccess files in the filesystem.

When this directive is set to All, then any directive which has the .htaccess Context is allowed in .htaccess files.

The directive-type can be one of the following groupings of directives.

AuthConfig

Allow use of the authorization directives (AuthDBMGroupFile, AuthDBMUserFile, AuthGroupFile, AuthName, AuthType, AuthUserFile, Require, etc.).

FileInfo

Allow use of the directives controlling document types (DefaultType, ErrorDocument, ForceType, LanguagePriority, SetHandler, SetInputFilter, SetOutputFilter, and mod_mime Add* and Remove* directives, etc.), document meta data (Header, RequestHeader, SetEnvIf, SetEnvIfNoCase, BrowserMatch, CookieExpires, CookieDomain, CookieStyle, CookieTracking, CookieName), mod_rewrite directives (RewriteEngine, RewriteOptions, RewriteBase, RewriteCond, RewriteRule), mod_alias directives (Redirect, RedirectTemp, RedirectPermanent, RedirectMatch), and Action from mod_actions.

Indexes

Allow use of the directives controlling directory indexing (AddDescription, AddIcon, AddIconByEncoding, AddIconByType, DefaultIcon, DirectoryIndex, FancyIndexing , HeaderName, IndexIgnore, IndexOptions, ReadmeName, etc.).

Limit

Allow use of the directives controlling host access (Allow, Deny and Order).

Options[=Option,...]

Allow use of the directives controlling specific directory features (Options and XBitHack). An equal sign may be given followed by a comma-separated list, without spaces, of options that may be set using the Options command.

Implicit disabling of Options

Even though the list of options that may be used in .htaccess files can be limited with this directive, as long as any Options directive is allowed any other inherited option can be disabled by using the non-relative syntax. In other words, this mechanism cannot force a specific option to remain set while allowing any others to be set.

Example:

In the example above, all directives that are neither in the group AuthConfig nor Indexes cause an internal server error.

See also

• AccessFileName
• Configuration Files
• .htaccess Files

AuthName Directive

This directive sets the name of the authorization realm for a directory. This realm is given to the client so that the user knows which username and password to send. AuthName takes a single argument; if the realm name contains spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. It must be accompanied by AuthType and Require directives, and directives such as AuthUserFile and AuthGroupFile to work.

For example:

The string provided for the AuthName is what will appear in the password dialog provided by most browsers.

See also

• Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control

AuthType Directive

This directive selects the type of user authentication for a directory. The authentication types available are Basic (implemented by mod_auth_basic) and Digest (implemented by mod_auth_digest).

To implement authentication, you must also use the AuthName and Require directives. In addition, the server must have an authentication-provider module such as mod_authn_file and an authorization module such as mod_authz_user.

See also

• Authentication and Authorization
• Access Control

CGIMapExtension Directive

This directive is used to control how Apache finds the interpreter used to run CGI scripts. For example, setting CGIMapExtension sys:\foo.nlm .foo will cause all CGI script files with a .foo extension to be passed to the FOO interpreter.

ContentDigest Directive

This directive enables the generation of Content-MD5 headers as defined in RFC1864 respectively RFC2616.

MD5 is an algorithm for computing a "message digest" (sometimes called "fingerprint") of arbitrary-length data, with a high degree of confidence that any alterations in the data will be reflected in alterations in the message digest.

The Content-MD5 header provides an end-to-end message integrity check (MIC) of the entity-body. A proxy or client may check this header for detecting accidental modification of the entity-body in transit. Example header:

Note that this can cause performance problems on your server since the message digest is computed on every request (the values are not cached).

Content-MD5 is only sent for documents served by the core, and not by any module. For example, SSI documents, output from CGI scripts, and byte range responses do not have this header.

DefaultType Directive

There will be times when the server is asked to provide a document whose type cannot be determined by its MIME types mappings.

The server SHOULD inform the client of the content-type of the document. If the server is unable to determine this by normal means, it will set it to the configured DefaultType. For example:

would be appropriate for a directory which contained many GIF images with filenames missing the .gif extension.

In cases where it can neither be determined by the server nor the administrator (e.g. a proxy), it is preferable to omit the MIME type altogether rather than provide information that may be false. This can be accomplished using

DefaultType None is only available in httpd-2.2.7 and later.

Note that unlike ForceType, this directive only provides the default mime-type. All other mime-type definitions, including filename extensions, that might identify the media type will override this default.

<Directory> Directive

<Directory> and </Directory> are used to enclose a group of directives that will apply only to the named directory, sub-directories of that directory, and the files within the respective directories. Any directive that is allowed in a directory context may be used. Directory-path is either the full path to a directory, or a wild-card string using Unix shell-style matching. In a wild-card string, ? matches any single character, and * matches any sequences of characters. You may also use [] character ranges. None of the wildcards match a `/' character, so <Directory /*/public_html> will not match /home/user/public_html, but <Directory /home/*/public_html> will match. Example:

Regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

would match directories in /www/ that consisted of three numbers.

If multiple (non-regular expression) <Directory> sections match the directory (or one of its parents) containing a document, then the directives are applied in the order of shortest match first, interspersed with the directives from the .htaccess files. For example, with

for access to the document /home/web/dir/doc.html the steps are:

• Apply directive AllowOverride None (disabling .htaccess files).
• Apply directive AllowOverride FileInfo (for directory /home).
• Apply any FileInfo directives in /home/.htaccess, /home/web/.htaccess and /home/web/dir/.htaccess in that order.

Regular expressions are not considered until after all of the normal sections have been applied. Then all of the regular expressions are tested in the order they appeared in the configuration file. For example, with

the regular expression section won't be considered until after all normal <Directory>s and .htaccess files have been applied. Then the regular expression will match on /home/abc/public_html/abc and the corresponding <Directory> will be applied.

Note that the default Apache access for <Directory /> is Allow from All. This means that Apache will serve any file mapped from an URL. It is recommended that you change this with a block such as

and then override this for directories you want accessible. See the Security Tips page for more details.

The directory sections occur in the httpd.conf file. <Directory> directives cannot nest, and cannot appear in a <Limit> or <LimitExcept> section.

See also

• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received

<DirectoryMatch> Directive

<DirectoryMatch> and </DirectoryMatch> are used to enclose a group of directives which will apply only to the named directory and sub-directories of that directory (and the files within), the same as <Directory>. However, it takes as an argument a regular expression. For example:

would match directories in /www/ that consisted of three numbers.

See also

• <Directory> for a description of how regular expressions are mixed in with normal <Directory>s
• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received

DocumentRoot Directive

This directive sets the directory from which httpd will serve files. Unless matched by a directive like Alias, the server appends the path from the requested URL to the document root to make the path to the document. Example:

then an access to http://www.my.host.com/index.html refers to /usr/web/index.html. If the directory-path is not absolute then it is assumed to be relative to the ServerRoot.

The DocumentRoot should be specified without a trailing slash.

See also

• Mapping URLs to Filesystem Locations

EnableMMAP Directive

This directive controls whether the httpd may use memory-mapping if it needs to read the contents of a file during delivery. By default, when the handling of a request requires access to the data within a file -- for example, when delivering a server-parsed file using mod_include -- Apache memory-maps the file if the OS supports it.

This memory-mapping sometimes yields a performance improvement. But in some environments, it is better to disable the memory-mapping to prevent operational problems:

• On some multiprocessor systems, memory-mapping can reduce the performance of the httpd.
• Deleting or truncating a file while httpd has it memory-mapped can cause httpd to crash with a segmentation fault.

For server configurations that are vulnerable to these problems, you should disable memory-mapping of delivered files by specifying:

For NFS mounted files, this feature may be disabled explicitly for the offending files by specifying:

EnableSendfile Directive

This directive controls whether httpd may use the sendfile support from the kernel to transmit file contents to the client. By default, when the handling of a request requires no access to the data within a file -- for example, when delivering a static file -- Apache uses sendfile to deliver the file contents without ever reading the file if the OS supports it.

This sendfile mechanism avoids separate read and send operations, and buffer allocations. But on some platforms or within some filesystems, it is better to disable this feature to avoid operational problems:

• Some platforms may have broken sendfile support that the build system did not detect, especially if the binaries were built on another box and moved to such a machine with broken sendfile support.
• On Linux the use of sendfile triggers TCP-checksum offloading bugs on certain networking cards when using IPv6.
• On Linux on Itanium, sendfile may be unable to handle files over 2GB in size.
• With a network-mounted DocumentRoot (e.g., NFS or SMB), the kernel may be unable to serve the network file through its own cache.

For server configurations that are vulnerable to these problems, you should disable this feature by specifying:

For NFS or SMB mounted files, this feature may be disabled explicitly for the offending files by specifying:

Please note that the per-directory and .htaccess configuration of EnableSendfile is not supported by mod_disk_cache. Only global definition of EnableSendfile is taken into account by the module.

ErrorDocument Directive

In the event of a problem or error, Apache can be configured to do one of four things,

1. output a simple hardcoded error message
2. output a customized message
3. internally redirect to a local URL-path to handle the problem/error
4. redirect to an external URL to handle the problem/error

The first option is the default, while options 2-4 are configured using the ErrorDocument directive, which is followed by the HTTP response code and a URL or a message. Apache will sometimes offer additional information regarding the problem/error.

URLs can begin with a slash (/) for local web-paths (relative to the DocumentRoot), or be a full URL which the client can resolve. Alternatively, a message can be provided to be displayed by the browser. Examples:

Additionally, the special value default can be used to specify Apache's simple hardcoded message. While not required under normal circumstances, default will restore Apache's simple hardcoded message for configurations that would otherwise inherit an existing ErrorDocument.

Note that when you specify an ErrorDocument that points to a remote URL (ie. anything with a method such as http in front of it), Apache will send a redirect to the client to tell it where to find the document, even if the document ends up being on the same server. This has several implications, the most important being that the client will not receive the original error status code, but instead will receive a redirect status code. This in turn can confuse web robots and other clients which try to determine if a URL is valid using the status code. In addition, if you use a remote URL in an ErrorDocument 401, the client will not know to prompt the user for a password since it will not receive the 401 status code. Therefore, if you use an ErrorDocument 401 directive, then it must refer to a local document.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) will by default ignore server-generated error messages when they are "too small" and substitute its own "friendly" error messages. The size threshold varies depending on the type of error, but in general, if you make your error document greater than 512 bytes, then MSIE will show the server-generated error rather than masking it. More information is available in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q294807.

Although most error messages can be overridden, there are certain circumstances where the internal messages are used regardless of the setting of ErrorDocument. In particular, if a malformed request is detected, normal request processing will be immediately halted and the internal error message returned. This is necessary to guard against security problems caused by bad requests.

If you are using mod_proxy, you may wish to enable ProxyErrorOverride so that you can provide custom error messages on behalf of your Origin servers. If you don't enable ProxyErrorOverride, Apache will not generate custom error documents for proxied content.

Prior to version 2.0, messages were indicated by prefixing them with a single unmatched double quote character.

See also

• documentation of customizable responses

ErrorLog Directive

The ErrorLog directive sets the name of the file to which the server will log any errors it encounters. If the file-path is not absolute then it is assumed to be relative to the ServerRoot.

If the file-path begins with a pipe character "|" then it is assumed to be a command to spawn to handle the error log.

See the notes on piped logs for more information.

Using syslog instead of a filename enables logging via syslogd(8) if the system supports it. The default is to use syslog facility local7, but you can override this by using the syslog:facility syntax where facility can be one of the names usually documented in syslog(1).

SECURITY: See the security tips document for details on why your security could be compromised if the directory where log files are stored is writable by anyone other than the user that starts the server.

See also

• LogLevel
• Apache Log Files

FileETag Directive

The FileETag directive configures the file attributes that are used to create the ETag (entity tag) response header field when the document is based on a static file. (The ETag value is used in cache management to save network bandwidth.) In Apache 1.3.22 and earlier, the ETag value was always formed from the file's inode, size, and last-modified time (mtime). The FileETag directive allows you to choose which of these -- if any -- should be used. The recognized keywords are:

INode

The file's i-node number will be included in the calculation

MTime

The date and time the file was last modified will be included

Size

The number of bytes in the file will be included

All

All available fields will be used. This is equivalent to:

FileETag INode MTime Size

None

If a document is file-based, no ETag field will be included in the response

The INode, MTime, and Size keywords may be prefixed with either + or -, which allow changes to be made to the default setting inherited from a broader scope. Any keyword appearing without such a prefix immediately and completely cancels the inherited setting.

If a directory's configuration includes FileETag INode MTime Size, and a subdirectory's includes FileETag -INode, the setting for that subdirectory (which will be inherited by any sub-subdirectories that don't override it) will be equivalent to FileETag MTime Size.

<Files> Directive

The <Files> directive limits the scope of the enclosed directives by filename. It is comparable to the <Directory> and <Location> directives. It should be matched with a </Files> directive. The directives given within this section will be applied to any object with a basename (last component of filename) matching the specified filename. <Files> sections are processed in the order they appear in the configuration file, after the <Directory> sections and .htaccess files are read, but before <Location> sections. Note that <Files> can be nested inside <Directory> sections to restrict the portion of the filesystem they apply to.

The filename argument should include a filename, or a wild-card string, where ? matches any single character, and * matches any sequences of characters:

<Files "cat.html">
    # Insert stuff that applies to cat.html here
</Files>

<Files "?at.*">
    # This would apply to cat.html, bat.html, hat.php and so on.
</Files>

Regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

would match most common Internet graphics formats. <FilesMatch> is preferred, however.

Note that unlike <Directory> and <Location> sections, <Files> sections can be used inside .htaccess files. This allows users to control access to their own files, at a file-by-file level.

See also

• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received

<FilesMatch> Directive

The <FilesMatch> directive limits the scope of the enclosed directives by filename, just as the <Files> directive does. However, it accepts a regular expression. For example:

would match most common Internet graphics formats.

See also

• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received

ForceType Directive

When placed into an .htaccess file or a <Directory>, or <Location> or <Files> section, this directive forces all matching files to be served with the content type identification given by MIME-type. For example, if you had a directory full of GIF files, but did not want to label them all with .gif, you might want to use:

Note that unlike DefaultType, this directive overrides all mime-type associations, including filename extensions, that might identify the media type.

You can override any ForceType setting by using the value of None:

GprofDir Directive

When the server has been compiled with gprof profiling support, GprofDir causes gmon.out files to be written to the specified directory when the process exits. If the argument ends with a percent symbol ('%'), subdirectories are created for each process id.

This directive currently only works with the prefork MPM.

HostnameLookups Directive

This directive enables DNS lookups so that host names can be logged (and passed to CGIs/SSIs in REMOTE_HOST). The value Double refers to doing double-reverse DNS lookup. That is, after a reverse lookup is performed, a forward lookup is then performed on that result. At least one of the IP addresses in the forward lookup must match the original address. (In "tcpwrappers" terminology this is called PARANOID.)

Regardless of the setting, when mod_authz_host is used for controlling access by hostname, a double reverse lookup will be performed. This is necessary for security. Note that the result of this double-reverse isn't generally available unless you set HostnameLookups Double. For example, if only HostnameLookups On and a request is made to an object that is protected by hostname restrictions, regardless of whether the double-reverse fails or not, CGIs will still be passed the single-reverse result in REMOTE_HOST.

The default is Off in order to save the network traffic for those sites that don't truly need the reverse lookups done. It is also better for the end users because they don't have to suffer the extra latency that a lookup entails. Heavily loaded sites should leave this directive Off, since DNS lookups can take considerable amounts of time. The utility logresolve, compiled by default to the bin subdirectory of your installation directory, can be used to look up host names from logged IP addresses offline.

HttpProtocolOptions Directive

This directive changes the rules applied to the HTTP Request Line (RFC 7230 §3.1.1) and the HTTP Request Header Fields (RFC 7230 §3.2), which are now applied by default or using the Strict option. Due to legacy modules, applications or custom user-agents which must be deperecated the Unsafe option has been added to revert to the legacy behaviors. These rules are applied prior to request processing, so must be configured at the global or default (first) matching virtual host section, by IP/port interface (and not by name) to be honored.

Prior to the introduction of this directive, the Apache HTTP Server request message parsers were tolerant of a number of forms of input which did not conform to the protocol. RFC 7230 §9.4 Request Splitting and §9.5 Response Smuggling call out only two of the potential risks of accepting non-conformant request messages, while RFC 7230 §3.5 "Message Parsing Robustness" identify the risks of accepting obscure whitespace and request message formatting. As of the introduction of this directive, all grammer rules of the specification are enforced in the default Strict operating mode, and the strict whitespace suggested by section 3.5 is enforced and cannot be relaxed.

Users are strongly cautioned against toggling the Unsafe mode of operation, particularly on outward-facing, publicly accessible server deployments. If an interface is required for faulty monitoring or other custom service consumers running on an intranet, users should toggle the Unsafe option only on a specific virtual host configured to service their internal private network.

Reviewing the messages logged to the ErrorLog, configured with LogLevel debug level, can help identify such faulty requests along with their origin. Users should pay particular attention to the 400 responses in the access log for invalid requests which were unexpectedly rejected.

RFC 7231 §4.1 "Request Methods" "Overview" requires that origin servers shall respond with an error when an unsupported method is encountered in the request line. This already happens when the LenientMethods option is used, but administrators may wish to toggle the RegisteredMethods option and register any non-standard methods using the RegisterHttpMethod directive, particularly if the Unsafe option has been toggled. The RegisteredMethods option should not be toggled for forward proxy hosts, as the methods supported by the origin servers are unknown to the proxy server.

RFC 2616 §19.6 "Compatibility With Previous Versions" had encouraged HTTP servers to support legacy HTTP/0.9 requests. RFC 7230 superceeds this with "The expectation to support HTTP/0.9 requests has been removed" and offers additional comments in RFC 7230 Appendix A. The Require1.0 option allows the user to remove support of the default Allow0.9 option's behavior.

<IfDefine> Directive

The <IfDefine test>...</IfDefine> section is used to mark directives that are conditional. The directives within an <IfDefine> section are only processed if the test is true. If test is false, everything between the start and end markers is ignored.

The test in the <IfDefine> section directive can be one of two forms:

• parameter-name
• !parameter-name

In the former case, the directives between the start and end markers are only processed if the parameter named parameter-name is defined. The second format reverses the test, and only processes the directives if parameter-name is not defined.

The parameter-name argument is a define as given on the httpd command line via -Dparameter- , at the time the server was started.

<IfDefine> sections are nest-able, which can be used to implement simple multiple-parameter tests. Example:

<IfModule> Directive

The <IfModule test>...</IfModule> section is used to mark directives that are conditional on the presence of a specific module. The directives within an <IfModule> section are only processed if the test is true. If test is false, everything between the start and end markers is ignored.

The test in the <IfModule> section directive can be one of two forms:

• module
• !module

In the former case, the directives between the start and end markers are only processed if the module named module is included in Apache -- either compiled in or dynamically loaded using LoadModule. The second format reverses the test, and only processes the directives if module is not included.

The module argument can be either the module identifier or the file name of the module, at the time it was compiled. For example, rewrite_module is the identifier and mod_rewrite.c is the file name. If a module consists of several source files, use the name of the file containing the string STANDARD20_MODULE_STUFF.

<IfModule> sections are nest-able, which can be used to implement simple multiple-module tests.

Include Directive

This directive allows inclusion of other configuration files from within the server configuration files.

Shell-style (fnmatch()) wildcard characters can be used to include several files at once, in alphabetical order. In addition, if Include points to a directory, rather than a file, Apache will read all files in that directory and any subdirectory. But including entire directories is not recommended, because it is easy to accidentally leave temporary files in a directory that can cause httpd to fail.

The file path specified may be an absolute path, or may be relative to the ServerRoot directory.

Examples:

Or, providing paths relative to your ServerRoot directory:

See also

• apachectl

KeepAlive Directive

The Keep-Alive extension to HTTP/1.0 and the persistent connection feature of HTTP/1.1 provide long-lived HTTP sessions which allow multiple requests to be sent over the same TCP connection. In some cases this has been shown to result in an almost 50% speedup in latency times for HTML documents with many images. To enable Keep-Alive connections, set KeepAlive On.

For HTTP/1.0 clients, Keep-Alive connections will only be used if they are specifically requested by a client. In addition, a Keep-Alive connection with an HTTP/1.0 client can only be used when the length of the content is known in advance. This implies that dynamic content such as CGI output, SSI pages, and server-generated directory listings will generally not use Keep-Alive connections to HTTP/1.0 clients. For HTTP/1.1 clients, persistent connections are the default unless otherwise specified. If the client requests it, chunked encoding will be used in order to send content of unknown length over persistent connections.

When a client uses a Keep-Alive connection, it will be counted as a single "request" for the MaxRequestsPerChild directive, regardless of how many requests are sent using the connection.

See also

• MaxKeepAliveRequests

KeepAliveTimeout Directive

The number of seconds Apache will wait for a subsequent request before closing the connection. Once a request has been received, the timeout value specified by the Timeout directive applies.

Setting KeepAliveTimeout to a high value may cause performance problems in heavily loaded servers. The higher the timeout, the more server processes will be kept occupied waiting on connections with idle clients.

In a name-based virtual host context, the value of the first defined virtual host (the default host) in a set of NameVirtualHost will be used. The other values will be ignored.

<Limit> Directive

Access controls are normally effective for all access methods, and this is the usual desired behavior. In the general case, access control directives should not be placed within a <Limit> section.

The purpose of the <Limit> directive is to restrict the effect of the access controls to the nominated HTTP methods. For all other methods, the access restrictions that are enclosed in the <Limit> bracket will have no effect. The following example applies the access control only to the methods POST, PUT, and DELETE, leaving all other methods unprotected:

The method names listed can be one or more of: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, CONNECT, OPTIONS, PATCH, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, MKCOL, COPY, MOVE, LOCK, and UNLOCK. The method name is case-sensitive. If GET is used, it will also restrict HEAD requests. The TRACE method cannot be limited.

<LimitExcept> Directive

<LimitExcept> and </LimitExcept> are used to enclose a group of access control directives which will then apply to any HTTP access method not listed in the arguments; i.e., it is the opposite of a <Limit> section and can be used to control both standard and nonstandard/unrecognized methods. See the documentation for <Limit> for more details.

For example:

LimitInternalRecursion Directive

An internal redirect happens, for example, when using the Action directive, which internally redirects the original request to a CGI script. A subrequest is Apache's mechanism to find out what would happen for some URI if it were requested. For example, mod_dir uses subrequests to look for the files listed in the DirectoryIndex directive.

LimitInternalRecursion prevents the server from crashing when entering an infinite loop of internal redirects or subrequests. Such loops are usually caused by misconfigurations.

The directive stores two different limits, which are evaluated on per-request basis. The first number is the maximum number of internal redirects that may follow each other. The second number determines how deeply subrequests may be nested. If you specify only one number, it will be assigned to both limits.

LimitRequestBody Directive

This directive specifies the number of bytes from 0 (meaning unlimited) to 2147483647 (2GB) that are allowed in a request body.

The LimitRequestBody directive allows the user to set a limit on the allowed size of an HTTP request message body within the context in which the directive is given (server, per-directory, per-file or per-location). If the client request exceeds that limit, the server will return an error response instead of servicing the request. The size of a normal request message body will vary greatly depending on the nature of the resource and the methods allowed on that resource. CGI scripts typically use the message body for retrieving form information. Implementations of the PUT method will require a value at least as large as any representation that the server wishes to accept for that resource.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks.

If, for example, you are permitting file upload to a particular location and wish to limit the size of the uploaded file to 100K, you might use the following directive:

LimitRequestFields Directive

Number is an integer from 0 (meaning unlimited) to 32767. The default value is defined by the compile-time constant DEFAULT_LIMIT_REQUEST_FIELDS (100 as distributed).

The LimitRequestFields directive allows the server administrator to modify the limit on the number of request header fields allowed in an HTTP request. A server needs this value to be larger than the number of fields that a normal client request might include. The number of request header fields used by a client rarely exceeds 20, but this may vary among different client implementations, often depending upon the extent to which a user has configured their browser to support detailed content negotiation. Optional HTTP extensions are often expressed using request header fields.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks. The value should be increased if normal clients see an error response from the server that indicates too many fields were sent in the request.

For example:

LimitRequestFieldSize Directive

This directive specifies the number of bytes that will be allowed in an HTTP request header.

The LimitRequestFieldSize directive allows the server administrator to set the limit on the allowed size of an HTTP request header field. A server needs this value to be large enough to hold any one header field from a normal client request. The size of a normal request header field will vary greatly among different client implementations, often depending upon the extent to which a user has configured their browser to support detailed content negotiation. SPNEGO authentication headers can be up to 12392 bytes.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks.

For example:

LimitRequestLine Directive

This directive sets the number of bytes that will be allowed on the HTTP request-line.

The LimitRequestLine directive allows the server administrator to set the limit on the allowed size of a client's HTTP request-line. Since the request-line consists of the HTTP method, URI, and protocol version, the LimitRequestLine directive places a restriction on the length of a request-URI allowed for a request on the server. A server needs this value to be large enough to hold any of its resource names, including any information that might be passed in the query part of a GET request.

This directive gives the server administrator greater control over abnormal client request behavior, which may be useful for avoiding some forms of denial-of-service attacks.

For example:

LimitXMLRequestBody Directive

Limit (in bytes) on maximum size of an XML-based request body. A value of 0 will disable any checking.

Example:

<Location> Directive

The <Location> directive limits the scope of the enclosed directives by URL. It is similar to the <Directory> directive, and starts a subsection which is terminated with a </Location> directive. <Location> sections are processed in the order they appear in the configuration file, after the <Directory> sections and .htaccess files are read, and after the <Files> sections.

<Location> sections operate completely outside the filesystem. This has several consequences. Most importantly, <Location> directives should not be used to control access to filesystem locations. Since several different URLs may map to the same filesystem location, such access controls may by circumvented.

The enclosed directives will be applied to the request if the path component of the URL meets any of the following criteria:

• The specified location matches exactly the path component of the URL.
• The specified location, which ends in a forward slash, is a prefix of the path component of the URL (treated as a context root).
• The specified location, with the addition of a trailing slash, is a prefix of the path component of the URL (also treated as a context root).

In the example below, where no trailing slash is used, requests to /private1, /private1/ and /private1/file.txt will have the enclosed directives applied, but /private1other would not.

In the example below, where a trailing slash is used, requests to /private2/ and /private2/file.txt will have the enclosed directives applied, but /private2 and /private2other would not.

For all origin (non-proxy) requests, the URL to be matched is a URL-path of the form /path/. No scheme, hostname, port, or query string may be included. For proxy requests, the URL to be matched is of the form scheme://servername/path, and you must include the prefix.

The URL may use wildcards. In a wild-card string, ? matches any single character, and * matches any sequences of characters. Neither wildcard character matches a / in the URL-path.

Regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

would match URLs that contained the substring /extra/data or /special/data. The directive <LocationMatch> behaves identical to the regex version of <Location>.

The <Location> functionality is especially useful when combined with the SetHandler directive. For example, to enable status requests but allow them only from browsers at example.com, you might use:

See also

• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received

<LocationMatch> Directive

The <LocationMatch> directive limits the scope of the enclosed directives by URL, in an identical manner to <Location>. However, it takes a regular expression as an argument instead of a simple string. For example:

would match URLs that contained the substring /extra/data or /special/data.

See also

• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received

LogLevel Directive

LogLevel adjusts the verbosity of the messages recorded in the error logs (see ErrorLog directive). The following levels are available, in order of decreasing significance:

When a particular level is specified, messages from all other levels of higher significance will be reported as well. E.g., when LogLevel info is specified, then messages with log levels of notice and warn will also be posted.

Using a level of at least crit is recommended.

For example:

MaxKeepAliveRequests Directive

The MaxKeepAliveRequests directive limits the number of requests allowed per connection when KeepAlive is on. If it is set to 0, unlimited requests will be allowed. We recommend that this setting be kept to a high value for maximum server performance.

For example:

MaxRanges Directive

The MaxRanges directive limits the number of HTTP ranges the server is willing to return to the client. If more ranges than permitted are requested, the complete resource is returned instead.

default

Limits the number of ranges to a compile-time default of 200.

none

Range headers are ignored.

unlimited

The server does not limit the number of ranges it is willing to satisfy.

number-of-ranges

A positive number representing the maximum number of ranges the server is willing to satisfy.

MergeTrailers Directive

This directive controls whether HTTP trailers are copied into the internal representation of HTTP headers. This merging occurs when the request body has been completely consumed, long after most header processing would have a chance to examine or modify request headers.

This option is provided for compatibility with releases prior to 2.2.28, where trailers were always merged.

NameVirtualHost Directive

The NameVirtualHost directive is a required directive if you want to configure name-based virtual hosts.

Although addr can be hostname it is recommended that you always use an IP address and a port, e.g.

With the NameVirtualHost directive you specify the IP address on which the server will receive requests for the name-based virtual hosts. This will usually be the address to which your name-based virtual host names resolve. In cases where a firewall or other proxy receives the requests and forwards them on a different IP address to the server, you must specify the IP address of the physical interface on the machine which will be servicing the requests. If you have multiple name-based hosts on multiple addresses, repeat the directive for each address.

Optionally you can specify a port number on which the name-based virtual hosts should be used, e.g.

IPv6 addresses must be enclosed in square brackets, as shown in the following example:

To receive requests on all interfaces, you can use an argument of *:80, or, if you are listening on multiple ports and really want the server to respond on all of them with a particular set of virtual hosts, *

See also

• Virtual Hosts documentation

Options Directive

The Options directive controls which server features are available in a particular directory.

option can be set to None, in which case none of the extra features are enabled, or one or more of the following:

All

All options except for MultiViews. This is the default setting.

ExecCGI

Execution of CGI scripts using mod_cgi is permitted.

FollowSymLinks

The server will follow symbolic links in this directory.

Even though the server follows the symlink it does not change the pathname used to match against <Directory> sections.

The FollowSymLinks and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Options work only in <Directory> sections or .htaccess files.

Omitting this option should not be considered a security restriction, since symlink testing is subject to race conditions that make it circumventable.

Includes

Server-side includes provided by mod_include are permitted.

IncludesNOEXEC

Server-side includes are permitted, but the #exec cmd and #exec cgi are disabled. It is still possible to #include virtual CGI scripts from ScriptAliased directories.

Indexes

If a URL which maps to a directory is requested and there is no DirectoryIndex (e.g., index.html) in that directory, then mod_autoindex will return a formatted listing of the directory.

MultiViews

Content negotiated "MultiViews" are allowed using mod_negotiation.

SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

The server will only follow symbolic links for which the target file or directory is owned by the same user id as the link.

Note

The FollowSymLinks and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Options work only in <Directory> sections or .htaccess files.

This option should not be considered a security restriction, since symlink testing is subject to race conditions that make it circumventable.

Normally, if multiple Options could apply to a directory, then the most specific one is used and others are ignored; the options are not merged. (See how sections are merged.) However if all the options on the Options directive are preceded by a + or - symbol, the options are merged. Any options preceded by a + are added to the options currently in force, and any options preceded by a - are removed from the options currently in force.

For example, without any + and - symbols:

then only Includes will be set for the /web/docs/spec directory. However if the second Options directive uses the + and - symbols:

then the options FollowSymLinks and Includes are set for the /web/docs/spec directory.

The default in the absence of any other settings is All.

Protocol Directive

This directive specifies the protocol used for a specific listening socket. The protocol is used to determine which module should handle a request and to apply protocol specific optimizations with the AcceptFilter directive.

You only need to set the protocol if you are running on non-standard ports; otherwise, http is assumed for port 80 and https for port 443.

For example, if you are running https on a non-standard port, specify the protocol explicitly:

You can also specify the protocol using the Listen directive.

See also

• AcceptFilter
• Listen

RegisterHttpMethod Directive

HTTP Methods that are not conforming to the relvant RFCs are normally rejected by request processing in Apache HTTPD. To avoid this, modules can register non-standard HTTP methods they support. The RegisterHttpMethod allows to register such methods manually. This can be useful for if such methods are forwared for external processing, e.g. to a CGI script.

Require Directive

This directive selects which authenticated users can access a resource. Multiple instances of this directive are combined with a logical "OR", such that a user matching any Require line is granted access. The restrictions are processed by authorization modules. Some of the allowed syntaxes provided by mod_authz_user and mod_authz_groupfile are:

Require user userid [userid] ...

Only the named users can access the resource.

Require group group-name [group-name] ...

Only users in the named groups can access the resource.

Require valid-user

All valid users can access the resource.

Other authorization modules that implement require options include mod_authnz_ldap, mod_authz_dbm, and mod_authz_owner.

Require must be accompanied by AuthName and AuthType directives, and directives such as AuthUserFile and AuthGroupFile (to define users and groups) in order to work correctly. Example:

Access controls which are applied in this way are effective for all methods. This is what is normally desired. If you wish to apply access controls only to specific methods, while leaving other methods unprotected, then place the Require statement into a <Limit> section.

If Require is used together with the Allow or Deny directives, then the interaction of these restrictions is controlled by the Satisfy directive.

Multiple Require directives do operate as logical "OR", but some underlying authentication modules may require an explicit configuration to let authentication be chained to others. This is typically the case with mod_authnz_ldap, which exports the AuthzLDAPAuthoritative in that intent.

See also

• Authentication and Authorization
• Access Control
• Satisfy
• mod_authz_host

RLimitCPU Directive

Takes 1 or 2 parameters. The first parameter sets the soft resource limit for all processes and the second parameter sets the maximum resource limit. Either parameter can be a number, or max to indicate to the server that the limit should be set to the maximum allowed by the operating system configuration. Raising the maximum resource limit requires that the server is running as root or in the initial startup phase.

This applies to processes forked from Apache children servicing requests, not the Apache children themselves. This includes CGI scripts and SSI exec commands, but not any processes forked from the Apache parent, such as piped logs.

CPU resource limits are expressed in seconds per process.

See also

• RLimitMEM
• RLimitNPROC

RLimitMEM Directive

Takes 1 or 2 parameters. The first parameter sets the soft resource limit for all processes and the second parameter sets the maximum resource limit. Either parameter can be a number, or max to indicate to the server that the limit should be set to the maximum allowed by the operating system configuration. Raising the maximum resource limit requires that the server is running as root or in the initial startup phase.

This applies to processes forked from Apache children servicing requests, not the Apache children themselves. This includes CGI scripts and SSI exec commands, but not any processes forked from the Apache parent, such as piped logs.

Memory resource limits are expressed in bytes per process.

See also

• RLimitCPU
• RLimitNPROC

RLimitNPROC Directive

Takes 1 or 2 parameters. The first parameter sets the soft resource limit for all processes, and the second parameter sets the maximum resource limit. Either parameter can be a number, or max to indicate to the server that the limit should be set to the maximum allowed by the operating system configuration. Raising the maximum resource limit requires that the server is running as root or in the initial startup phase.

This applies to processes forked from Apache children servicing requests, not the Apache children themselves. This includes CGI scripts and SSI exec commands, but not any processes forked from the Apache parent, such as piped logs.

Process limits control the number of processes per user.

See also

• RLimitMEM
• RLimitCPU

Satisfy Directive

Access policy if both Allow and Require used. The parameter can be either All or Any. This directive is only useful if access to a particular area is being restricted by both username/password and client host address. In this case the default behavior (All) is to require that the client passes the address access restriction and enters a valid username and password. With the Any option the client will be granted access if they either pass the host restriction or enter a valid username and password. This can be used to password restrict an area, but to let clients from particular addresses in without prompting for a password.

For example, if you wanted to let people on your network have unrestricted access to a portion of your website, but require that people outside of your network provide a password, you could use a configuration similar to the following:

Since version 2.0.51 Satisfy directives can be restricted to particular methods by <Limit> and <LimitExcept> sections.

See also

• Allow
• Require

ScriptInterpreterSource Directive

This directive is used to control how Apache finds the interpreter used to run CGI scripts. The default setting is Script. This causes Apache to use the interpreter pointed to by the shebang line (first line, starting with #!) in the script. On Win32 systems this line usually looks like:

or, if perl is in the PATH, simply:

Setting ScriptInterpreterSource Registry will cause the Windows Registry tree HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to be searched using the script file extension (e.g., .pl) as a search key. The command defined by the registry subkey Shell\ExecCGI\Command or, if it does not exist, by the subkey Shell\Open\Command is used to open the script file. If the registry keys cannot be found, Apache falls back to the behavior of the Script option.

For example, the registry setting to have a script with the .pl extension processed via perl would be: