iTP Secure WebServer System Administrator's Guide (iTPWebSvr 5.1+)

Configuring the iTP Secure WebServer
iTP Secure WebServer System Administrator’s Guide—522659-001
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Mapping Requests to Contents
A common use of index files is to establish home pages that apply to a server’s entire
contents. For example, the following directives might be specified in a configuration
file:
Filemap / /usr/tandem/webserver/root/
IndexFile index.html
When a web client makes a request to this server through the home page URL
http://www.widgets.com/
the server returns the file index.html contained in
/usr/tandem/webserver/root
You can configure your server to automatically generate an index file whenever the
server cannot locate an index file within an accessed directory. This generated index file
lists all the files currently residing in the accessed directory. For complete information
on automatic indexing, see Enabling Automatic Directory Indexing
on page 7-33.
Content Negotiation
Sometimes it is reasonable to present the same content to different users in different
ways. For example, you might want to let the user choose whether to receive text in
English, German, or Japanese. Similarly, different clients might prefer different
character sets or file compression options.
To satisfy these needs, the iTP Secure WebServer supports server-based content
negotiation. Content negotiation implies that
•
A request from a client might include Accept headers (Accept, Accept-Language,
Accept-Encoding, Accept-Charset) to specify the client’s preferred data
representations. The HTTP/1.1 specification defines these headers and also a
method of weighting (describing the precedence among) several options.
•
The server configuration enables content negotiation and specifies the types of
content negotiation to allow (language only or multiple criteria).
•
The content files are organized and named in a way that allows the server to
distinguish among different representations of the same content.
Configuration Directives for Content Negotiation
The iTP Secure WebServer makes content-negotiation decisions on the basis of the
following three configuration directives:
•
The Negotiation directive specifies whether the server should perform content
negotiation and, if so, whether to make decisions based on language alone or also on
the basis of encoding and character set. For example, the following directive
specifies that the server should allow multiple content-negotiation criteria:
Negotiation Mult
•
The LanguagePreference directive specifies how the server should choose
among different language representations of the same content in cases in which the
request does not include an Accept-Language header. (If the request includes an