Web Server Capabilities

This page is meant to be a starting point for people who need to make changes to what is visible on websites hosted on the main CS webservers www.cs and www.student.cs.

Basic Information

Our webservers are running the Apache HTTP Server software. The Apache documentation is available at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/. See WebFileLocations for information about where web-related files actually reside.

Many parts of the web do not come directly from HTML files stored on the server, or the HTML files are generated automatically by a program:

• Anybody doing any significant work on the web will at some point need to edit the left-side menus in their part of the website. The “Main Entrance” for the menu editor is at https://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/odyssey/web/menuEditor/. See IsaacMorland or an existing editor of the area in which you are interested for access.
• The News section of the CS website is generated from text files. See PostingNewsItems for instructions.
• The Events section of the CS website is based upon WebCalendar. See UsingWebCalendar for instructions.

Installed Capabilities

Here are some capabilities that are available on some of our web servers:

• FlexSuexec - Allows running CGIs as the user of your choice
• LookAndFeelImplementation - The CSCF implementation of the UW common look and feel
• PhpMyAdmin - Convenient administration of MySQL databases.
• OdysseyApplications - (under construction) Web applications implemented using a Java framework.

Web Authentication

A desirable feature of our (the whole campus) web service(s) is a central, secure, authentication service that ideally supports single-sign on.

• ModAuthCASUbuntu - notes on setting-up mod_auth_cas with apache2 on Ubuntu
• Although not really useful to us, you might care to know how to set-up AuthCAS (perl module) on Ubuntu Feisty (AuthCASFeistyClient)

New Web Architecture

This whole page will need to be overhauled to refer to the new web architecture once it is in place. Here is a place to put the most important notes about the changes prior to enabling the new architecture.

See WebHosts for information about hostnames related to the web service.