Q. How do I find out my Apache webserver document root under Linux / UNIX / BSD operating systems?
A. Apache has DocumentRoot directive.
This directive sets the directory from which Apache will serve files. Unless matched by a directive like Alias, the server appends the path from the requested URL to the document root to make the path to the document. Example:
DocumentRoot /home/www/theos.in
then an access to http://www.theos.in/index.html refers to /home/www/theos.in/index.html.
Finding Apache Document Root
Use grep command as follows:
# grep -i 'DocumentRoot' httpd.conf
RHEL / Red hat / Fedora / CentOS Linux specific command:
# grep -i 'DocumentRoot' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
FreeBSD specific command:
# grep -i 'DocumentRoot' /usr/local/etc/apache22/httpd.conf
Sample output:
# DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your DocumentRoot "/usr/local/www/apache22/data"
/usr/local/www/apache22/data is default document root for your website.
To modify DocumentRoot use vi command and change DocumentRoot:
# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
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i want to ask you about Linux question
– what does documentRoot mean in webserver configuration?
– what are the run levels? Explain them briefly?
And what if there is no document root specified in the httpd.conf file??? What is the default document root? Is there a way to query apache from the terminal for this value?
If you know where httpd.conf is, you automatically know where your www root is. I wonder why one thought that an article like this is useful.