User manual
Table Of Contents
- Web Technologies Administration
- Contents
- Web Technologies Overview
- Managing Web Technologies
- Managing Websites
- Using Server Admin to Manage Websites
- Changing the Access Port for a Website
- Improving Performance of Static Websites (PerformanceCache)
- Enabling Access and Error Logs for a Website
- Setting Up Directory Listing for a Website
- Connecting to Your Website
- Enabling WebDAV on Websites
- Enabling a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Script
- Enabling Server Side Includes (SSI)
- Viewing Website Settings
- Setting Server Responses to MIME Types and ContentHandlers
- Enabling SSL
- Enabling PHP
- User Content on Websites
- WebMail
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
- Working With Open-Source Applications
- Installing and Viewing WebModules
- Solving Problems
- Where to Find More Information
- Glossary
- Index
Chapter 2 Managing Web Technologies 21
The Apache server in Mac OS X Server uses a public key-private key combination to
protect information. A browser encrypts information using a public key provided by
the server. Only the server has a private key that can decrypt that information.
When SSL is implemented on a server, a browser connects to it using the https prefix in
the URL, rather than http. The “s” indicates that the server is secure.
When a browser initiates a connection to an SSL-protected server, it connects to a
specific port (443) and sends a message that describes the encryption ciphers it
recognizes. The server responds with its strongest cipher, and the browser and server
then continue exchanging messages until the server determines the strongest cipher
both it and the browser recognize. Then the server sends its certificate (the Apache
web server uses an ISO X.509 certificate) to the browser; this certificate identifies the
server and uses it to create an encryption key for the browser to use. At this point a
secure connection has been established and the browser and server can exchange
encrypted information.
Using WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) allows you or your users to
make changes to websites while the sites are running. You enable WebDAV for
individual sites, and you also need to assign access privileges for the sites and for the
web folders. See “Enabling WebDAV on Websites” on page 30 for details.
Using Tomcat
Tomcat adds Java servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) capabilities to Mac OS X Server.
Java servlets are Java-based applications that run on your server, in contrast to Java
applets, which run on the user’s computer. JavaServer Pages allows you to embed Java
servlets in your HTML pages.
You can set Tomcat to start automatically whenever the server starts up. This will
ensure that the Tomcat module starts up after a power failure or after the server shuts
down for any reason.
You can use Server Admin or the command-line tool to enable the Tomcat module. See
“Tomcat” on page 58 for more information about Tomcat and how to use it with your
web server.
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