On 8/26/11, Always Learning centos@u61.u22.net wrote:
On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 14:36 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
the existing EL httpd.conf includes /etc/httpd/conf.d/*.conf and any changes are expected to be made there rather than editing the stock file.
Hi John,
No Centos updates are likely to interfere with my Apache server options and virtual hosts. The existing /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf is large and laborious to read and fully understand especially with so many useful comments.
'including' the parts that do change and are not operating system dependant, meaning putting them somewhere which has no connection to the operating system, for example
/data/config/apache/server.conf /data/config/apache/domain.*
means, I believe, that if a change to one small file goes wrong then there is absolutely no danger to 'damaging' any of the other files and the source of the problem is quick and easy to identify. Thus 'change damage' is strictly limited to one small self-contained file and can not affect any of the other files.
I have too much experience of so-called collateral damage inadvertently caused to other parts of a file being changed. It costs time and money to trace and diagnose problems, so economically it is a good idea to eliminate as much as possible non-involved configuration parameters.
As you will have noticed Apache actually offers the ability to fragment configuration parameters to other files by supplying - for the benefit of people like me - the 'include' facility. If Apache never wanted folks to use this useful facility, it would never have offered the 'include' ability.
I think you're misunderstanding John there? Rather than suggesting using a single large httpd.conf file, he seems to be just pointing out that the default config already includes any *.conf files inside the conf.d directory so you could just add the additional/sub .conf files in there for consistency.