Category: Web

Web related articles

Apache Server Status OPTIONS *

Checking the Apache server-status page I noticed multiple lines like the following:

29-39 – 0/0/3162 . 32.26 8949 0 0.0 0.00 186.48 123.111.123.111 mywebsite.co.uk OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
30-39 – 0/0/10 . 0.00 24324 0 0.0 0.00 0.04 123.111.123.111 mywebsite.co.uk OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0

The access_log for that website also showed:

123.111.123.111 – – [18/Nov/2009:09:28:44 +0000] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat) (internal dummy connection)” 2468
123.111.123.111 – – [18/Nov/2009:09:35:37 +0000] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat) (internal dummy connection)” 1924

Apparently these are Apache calling itself to keep child processes alive:

When the Apache HTTP Server manages its child processes, it needs a way
to wake up processes that are listening for new connections. To do
this, it sends a simple HTTP request back to itself.

Example robots.txt

Not all crawlers obey all of these rules but as a reference point. The crawl delay is the number of seconds between requests and the newer request-rate is set here to not more than 1 every 5 seconds. The crawlers are also asked to visit during the night.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /media/
Crawl-delay: 10
Request-rate: 1/5
Visit-time: 2100-0545

Apache LDAP Authentication to Active Directory

I was testing authentication against Active Directory (LDAP) using Apache 2. The following worked for me in a .htaccess file but only after adding:

LDAPVerifyServerCert Off

in the main httpd.conf file. I presume this is related to the server name in the SSL certificate on the Active Directory server.

AuthBasicProvider ldap
AuthzLDAPAuthoritative Off
AuthLDAPURL ldaps://adserver.prefix.tld.co.uk:636/DC=prefix,DC=tld,DC=co,DC=uk?sAMAccountName?sub?(objectClass=user)
AuthLDAPBindDN “CN=someuser,OU=some ou,OU=another unit,OU=department,OU=directorate,OU=Administration,OU=another big unit,DC=prefix,DC=tld,DC=co,DC=uk”
AuthLDAPBindPassword secret
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Protected”
require valid-user

Normal users should then be prompted for a username and password to access the directory and if correct credentials are supplied should be given access to the content.

Reducing Form Spam

The CMC team have implemented an anti-spam measure to reduce comment form spam. The following instructions explain how to use this from within the Terminal 4 content management system. The result is that before your form is displayed the users IP address is checked against a list of known spammers – so there may be a 1 second delay before the form is displayed.

  1. Navigate your content and find your current Email Form
  2. Click the Add Content button
  3. Choose the ‘pure text template t4’ template
  4. Name the content block as ‘php’ and add the content EXACTLY as shown here to the body field:
  5. Click the ‘Add’ button to save this content:
  6. Move the new php content above your email form using the arrows
  7. So your content should look similar to the following:
  8. Publish your content in the normal way.