5.2

Creating and Using vFabric Web
Server Instances
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VMware vFabric Suite 5.2 27
• httpdctl: Perl script for Unix. See Unix: Start and Stop vFabric Web Server Instances for usage examples.
• httpdctl.ps1: PowerShell script for Windows. See Windows: Start and Stop vFabric Web Server Instances for usage
examples.
Script commands are the same for both. Commands are described in the following table.
Table 5.3. Commands of the httpdctl Script
Command Description
start Starts the vFabric Web Server instance. If the instance is already
running, the command returns an error.
stop Forcibly stops the vFabric Web Server instance. All currently opened
connections are aborted.
gracefulstop Gracefully stops the vFabric Web Server instance, which means that
the script waits until all currently open connections are closed rather
than aborting them forcibly.
restart Restarts the instance. If the instance was not originally running, the
script starts it. The script also runs a configtest before starting the
instance.
graceful Gracefully restarts the instance. If the instance is not running, it is
started. This command differs from a normal restart in that currently
open connections are not aborted. A side effect is that old log files will
not be closed immediately. This means that if you use this command
in a log rotation script, a substantial delay may be necessary to ensure
that the old log files are closed before processing them. This command
runs a configtest before starting the instance.
status Displays basic status information about the instance, such as whether
it is running and its process id (PID) if so.
install Installs the instance as a Windows or Unix service.
After installing the service on Windows, you use the Windows Services
console or the sc command to start, stop, and restart the vFabric Web
Server instance. The install command has these properties :
• Service Name: vFabrichttpdinstance-name. Example:
vFabrichttpdmyserver
• Display Name: vFabric httpd instance-name. Example:
vFabric httpd myserver
Also use the Windows Services control panel or sc command to
configure whether the service starts automatically when Windows
starts, and so on.
On Unix, the instance is installed as a script file in the /etc/init.d
directory with name vFabric-httpd-instance-name. The service
automatically starts and stops when Unix is started or stopped.
uninstall Uninstalls the instance as Windows or Unix service. On Windows, the
instance is removed from the Service registry. On Unix, the command
deletes the /etc/init.d/vFabric-httpd-instance-name script
file.
configtest Runs a syntax test against the configuration files, such as conf/
httpd.conf. The script parses the configuration files and either
reports Syntax OK or outputs detailed information about the particular
syntax error.
Serve a Sample HTML File from Your vFabric Web Server Instance
After you install vFabric Web Server and create an instance, you can use it to host your entire Web site. This section does not
describe the entire process; rather, it simply shows how to serve an HTML file from the default document root of your instance.