Fedora and webserver dependency

[Jan Kaluza]

On Monday, October 04, 2010 10:55:28 pm Radek Vokál wrote:
> Dne 4.10.2010 18:29, Pavel Alexeev (aka Pahan-Hubbitus) napsal(a):
> >   04.10.2010 14:49, Jan Kaluza wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> there are over 100 packages which "Require: httpd" and it looks they are
> >> preconfigured only for httpd. However, Fedora contains more webservers
> >> than apache (httpd) and it's currently impossible (as far as I know) to
> >> install for example php (phpMyAdmin, wordpress, ...) if you want to use
> >> lighttpd instead of httpd, because "yum install php" installs also
> >> httpd. You then have to disable httpd by "chkconfig httpd off", but
> >> there's no way to have PHP installed without httpd.
> >> 
> >> I think one solution is to use "webserver" virtual package instead of
> >> "Require: httpd". Of course it's OK to use "Require: httpd" in packages
> >> which really needs httpd and can't work with another webserver, but
> >> otherwise I think "webserver" virtual package should be used.
> > 
> > It was discussed not so long in past.
> > I agree absolutely.
> > But there also present small problem - many packages includes Apache
> > virtual hosts configuration, .htaccess settings and some similar stuff
> > targeted only for Apache. In most cases it is not so hard to implement
> > similar settings for example for Ngnix and Lighthttpd... But, do we have
> > rights require such implementation for all present webservers from
> > package maintainer? In any case it additional work and requires
> > additional skills. What if new webserver will appear in repos?
> 
> I'd say that httpd specific files should go to subpackages like
> php-httpd. It's an overhead but as you say, what if a new webserver hits
> the repos.

Well, if you check .spec files of packages which "Require: webserver", you'll 
find out that they are actually preconfigured for httpd, but doesn't force you 
to install it (That's not really true, because usually they depend on "php" 
which forces you to install httpd).

I think this could be the way. We can somewhere declare that all packages are 
preconfigured for httpd, and if you want to use another server, you have to 
configure it by yourself. This will make almost no change for current users, 
but it would allow to not install httpd if you don't want it.

> Radek
> 
> >> Another problem is that each webserver in Fedora uses different
> >> username/group. If you have application which stores some private data
> >> which should be accessible for that application and for webserver, but
> >> not for another users, you have to use something like "chown
> >> your_app_username:webserver_group private_directory". This is not
> >> doable when webserver group is different for each webserver, so you
> >> have to support *just* one webserver in .spec file or loose the
> >> security. Can't we use single username/group for all webserver?
> >> 
> >> Regards,
> >> Jan Kaluza

Regards,
Jan Kaluza