Sun ONE Web Server 6.1 Getting Started Guide |
Chapter 1
Basic TasksThe Sun ONE Web Server is a secure and highly available server that you can use to host web sites. Each web site you create on Sun ONE Web Server is identified by a unique URL or address. A URL is a combination of a specific IP address, a port and a host name that follows the pattern: http://www.sun.com/.
Sun ONE Web Server listens on the network for requests from clients (browsers) for specific pages that it hosts. The pages that the Sun ONE Web Server makes available are stored in a directory structure within its primary document directory, also referred to as the docroot, in this guide.
When you install the Sun ONE Web Server 6.1 product, two server instances are installed by default:
This is shown in the figure below:
The Administration Server is created in the server_root/https-admserv directory and you use it to administer all of your Sun ONE Web Server instances, including the default instance.
The default instance is created in the server_root/https-host.domain directory. You specified the host.domain part of the directory name during installation.
In this section, we will learn how to perform the following tasks:
Start the Administration Server
After you’ve installed Sun ONE Web Server, to access the Administration Server, you must first start it.
Let’s assume that you installed the Administration Server at the default directory location, /opt/SUNWwbsvr/:
- To start the Administration Server on a UNIX machine, go to the /https-admserv directory:
- Alternatively, you can type ./startconsole in the server root directory:
- On Windows, the installation process creates a program group with an Start Web Server Administration Server icon. When you click this icon, the Administration Server is launched in a browser window.
Access the Administration Server
After you’ve started the Administration Server, you can access it at any time by specifying the Administration Server address in a browser window: http://server_name:administration_port.
Let’s assume that your server is called acme and during installation, you chose the default port 8888 as the port for the Administration Server to run on.
To launch the web-based Administration Server interface, open a browser window and type http://acme:8888.
The Administration Server prompts you to authenticate yourself through a login screen. Type your username and password (you specified these when you installed the server). Once authentication is complete, you’re ready to get started.
You can manage your web server(s), using the following user interfaces:
For a complete description of the features each of these interfaces provides, refer to the Sun ONE Web Server 6.1 Administrator’s Guide.
Next, let’s turn to the default web server instance. This is turned off, by default, when you first install the product and you need to start it.
Start the Web Server Instance
To start the default web server instance, you can use either the Administration Server interface or the start script available in the server_root/https-host.domain directory.
- Access the Administration Server interface in a browser and then click the Manage Server link. This brings up the Manage Server page where you can see your web server listed at the top of a drop-down menu. Click the Manage button. This takes you to the On/Off page in the Server Manager interface where you click the Server On button to start the server instance.
- Alternatively, go to /opt/SUNWwbsvr/https-host.domain directory, and type ./start at the command prompt.
Access the Web Server
Let’s walk through how you can access the web server interface next. Let’s assume that during installation, you chose the default port, 80, as the port for your server, acme. To access its default home page, type the address in a browser window, as shown below.
Open a browser window and type http://acme.
The default home page of the server is displayed from the server_root/docs directory.
The simplest way you can publish additional content on the site is by copying what you want to publish onto the docroot directory, server_root/docs, of the web server instance.
The server_root/docs directory contains a set of default pages, including one named index.html (shown in the figure above). You can replace these default pages with other content; doing so does not impair functionality in any way. For example, if you want to publish your own set of HTML pages, copy these into the server_root/docs/ directory. By default, Sun ONE Web Server displays index.html as the server home page, which you can launch by typing http://acme in a browser window.
You don’t however have to copy everything that you want to publish on your site into the docroot directory. You can also put content into any directory that you have mapped as an additional document directory.
This is discussed in the section “Create an Additional Document Directory” in the next chapter “Creating and Using Virtual Servers.”