Topic: httdp.conf & HostNameLookups

[Chaloner Hale]

Hi,

I would like the Apache log to show hostnames rather than IP addresses. In /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf there is an option to turn HostNameLookups ON. How would I go about turning it on and have the change made permanent?

Thanks for the advice,
Chal

[Luke Drumm]

The end result that you want is the 'HostameLookups' setting at the start of your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf to be set to yes.

In order to do this we need to alter the some of the template info that goes into making the httpd.conf file.

The original system templates for this file reside in the '/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf' directory but we don't really want to start mucking around with the original system files (do we?) so we'll create a custom template instead.

The templating system will automatically detect you custom alterations, when we come to rebuild the httpd.conf file, and use your custom file(s) instead of the system ones.

Okay so the steps to do all of this?

On your beloved server do the following: (Ignoring my comments in the parentheses)

cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom

(From here we need to recreate the directory structure of the file we wish to alter)

 mkdir -p etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf                                                                          

(Now re take a copy of the original system template so we've got something to work from)


cp /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/05NoHostLookups .

(Don't forget the space and the full stop at the end of the line above)
(Now we use our trusty editor of choice to edit the file...)

pico 05NoHostLookups

(And we change the 'HostnameLookups off' line to...)

HostnameLookups on

(At this point you can hit Ctrl-X to exit Pico and hit 'Y' to save the file)
(Now we need to get the templating system to re-generate the httpd.conf for us.)

 /sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
 
 (We can confirm the changes have been made by taking a look at the original conf file and noting that the HostNameLookups should now be set to 'on')
 
 head /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
 
 
(Now to actually restart apache to get these changes going, you could just restart the apache service by itself, but we may as well make sure everything else is working as expected while we're here.)

/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save


And after your server takes it's time crunching through that last command, that's it.

Regards,
Luke

[Chaloner Hale]

Thank you very much for a very comprehensive answer.

Chaloner Hale