On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 11:35:00AM -0800, Dominic Maraglia wrote:
SuSE's documentation states that, if using SuSEconfig, one should not manually edit httpd.conf, as this will cause a failure when running md5check sums. Fair enough. So then, is it safe/acceptable to manually edit the httpd.conf.SuSEconfig?
In a way, it is always safe because due to the stored md5sum SuSEconfig will notice that the file is modified by someone else, and refrain from changing that particular file. Also, it is by all means acceptable -- you just need to be aware that SuSEconfig's service will no longer be available afterwards (for that particular file). But as you usually will start out with a fresh configuration, adapted by SuSEconfig to your needs, and from then on do not really need it any longer, this might not be worrying you at all. As Togan pointed out it is a good idea to put the local configuration into other files instead of scattering it into httpd.conf. This is also the method I prefer, for 2 reasons: First, you keep the overview about your own configuration. (Note that apache first reads the complete config, before it starts to assemble it, so the order is often not important.) Second, there will be a time when your httpd.conf will be replaced by a fresh one, either by a major version upgrade, or maybe with the migration to another system. Then you will be glad if you kept your own stuff separately! Nevertheless in many cases you'll still find yourself doing one or two changes to httpd.conf itself (some things can't be overridden once they are set, like CustomLog). But these small changes will be easy to merge into another new httpd.conf. Especially if you use version control, which can be as easy as "ci -l httpd.conf" and "rcsdiff -u ...". Then again, as SuSEconfig does change only a few places in httpd.conf itself, you may want to change things yourself and still use SuSEconfig... just remove the file /var/adm/SuSEconfig/md5/etc/httpd/httpd.conf and SuSEconfig will ignore your changes. In doubt compare SuSEconfig's version with the current file, e.g.: diff -u /etc/httpd/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/httpd.conf.SuSEconfig Peter