User manual

2
Configuring the Apache2
Web Server
In this chapter, our goal will be to configure Apache2. Apache2 is Koha's web
server -it serves Koha pages to users when they access the OPAC (Online Public
Access Catalog) or the staff client. At the end of the chapter we will be able to launch
Koha's OPAC and the staff client interfaces using a web browser. However, the
interfaces won't work until we execute Koha's web installer, a topic for Chapter 4.
We cover this chapter in three stages -first an orientation, next the preparatory steps,
and finally a demonstration of the configuration. Again, we demonstrate the steps on
two Linux distributions - Debian and openSuSE.
Understanding Apache2 configuration
In this section we try and understand what Apache2 is, how to configure different
websites or applications that use it, and how the configuration differs across
Linux distributions.
About Apache2
Apache is the world's most popular web server. It is used to serve static and dynamic
pages to web browsers. Apache2 is a full featured web server. Koha uses it among
other things for:
Setting up two web interfaces, one for the OPAC and the other for
the staff client
Setting up of a host name for Koha, something like
ht tp : / / koha .
mylibrary.org/