installiing joomla

[Tim]

On Tue, 2013-09-17 at 10:15 +1000, Roger wrote:
> I don't grasp the significance of a directory called /html or /better
> or /someothername except that httpd.conf refers to /html. It could
> equally refer to /someothername with the same vulnerability.

Undiplomatic blunt mode - the point would be obvious if you had read the
Apache manual, and understood how to run webservers before you tried to
do something fancy with them.  Learn to use a webserver, in its basic
forms, before you try running something more complex, such as adding
Joomla (or anything else) to it.  I understood all of this, years ago,
by reading the manuals and experimenting.  I didn't need external
information to understand it.  The manuals are going to tell you the
same information that we will.

As I've already explained, if I am running virtual hosts, so that I
might run three completely different websites on the same webserver.
You do NOT want browsers to be able to traverse into another webserver
just by them changing filepaths in the URI.  And that's the point about
not making virtual hosts as sub-directories inside /var/www/html.  They
can all be walked into by the front door of the default webserver.

The same kind of thing applies to running other applications on the
server to form parts of the same website.  You keep their content
separated in the directory tree.  So that browsers can only access what
they're supposed to, not wade around all over the place because you've
shovelled everything into the same spot.

Reading between the lines, I think you need to learn how to manage
filing systems on your computer, before contemplating webserving them.
I'm not talking about ext3 versus fat, but the concept of storing data
in different, logical, separated, categorised, locations.  And, the
concept of chrooting, as that's how the webserver works - it provides
WWW access to sandboxed areas of filespace.

> Are VirtualHosts more secure than /html?

No.  They're just treated as another server instance.  Which can be
operated with different parameters (including where the HTML files are
located).

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.