Apache 2 Administration Tools on Ubuntu or Windows - apache

I am totally new to Apache and Ubuntu, is there an admin tools where the available functions and features and settings are more accessible? I am finding it very difficult to do even the simplest things.... please help.
Cheers.

apacheConf is available for most flavours of Linux, however:
1) it ignores the distribution-specific layout of the config files and implements its own structure
2) its just a tool for updating the config - it doesn't actually tell you what the config options mean
3) like any gui tool it abstracts the actual data (in this case, the apache config) you are manipulating
4) there are at least 3 different programs branded as apacheConf
http://www.apache-gui.com/apache-linux.html
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.2-Manual/custom-guide/apacheconf.html
and the config tool bundled in Mandriva
5) it limits what you can actually configure to the design on the UI (e.g. RedHat apacheConf only allows you to set one listening address
Having buttons to click does not help you understand what you are actually trying to achieve (unless your objective is an MCSE of course ;). I'd recommend you go get a good book on Apache config and take the time to read it.
C.

Try Webmin - a nice web-based GUI tool. There is a .deb package for ubuntu in their downloads page.
http://webmin.com

Here are some options to consider for helping you to better understand how Apache works and how to administer/configure the server:
Read the official HOW-TO
Take a look at a commercial tool like ApacheConf
Ask questions here about the specific issues you are having
HTH,
-aj

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How to Install Things off Command Line in Computer we are SSHed to

so my general problem right now is that I'm SSHing into another computer and would like to download Java, however a lot of what I would need to get things set up can only be accessed, from what I can tell so far, from a download off the web browser. Of course there are likely several solutions to this, such as ways to download the environment and language outside of a web browser, but at the same time I'd like to know the general strategies one would take in downloading new languages and environments on a computer they are SSHed into, or don't have as much utility in its use. Thank you!

Small cross reverse proxy server that can be configures and redistrubution

Hi as the title says I'm looking for a cross platform reverse proxy that can be pre configured and then redistributed.
Reason
There are multiple people running 5 apps on servers
locahost:8080
locahost:8081
locahost:8082
locahost:8083
locahost:8084
Now with the reverse proxy I would like to set it up so
localhost/one
localhost/two
localhost/three
localhost/four
localhost/five
I could manually set it up with Apache or something similar for each person but it seems wiser to pre configure something and then just redistribute it so everyone can just run it and it works out the box. I was thinking of python as its cross platform but haven't found anything suitable yet. Does anyone know of anything that doesn't have tons of frills and is lightweight?
Thanks
I know this is rather late, but Node.js has a number of proxy components that would fit. node-http-proxy being the most commonly quoted.
Node.js works well on multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux at least) and is based on Google's "V8" JavaScript engine. It is non-blocking and highly performant.

Is there a decent, standalone, cross-platform webserver that will work in concert with Autorun on USB Jump Drives?

I'm trying to find a decent standalone webserver that I can load up on a jump drive.
My wife is a photographer, and I'd like to present the clients with their images on usb. When they plug it in, I'd like a web page to load up, and run some jQuery magic to show them a nice carousel of all there images.
So far, this is all fine since it can all be done client side and doesn't need a server at all.
The problem I'm facing is that I'd like some server-side code to be able to read the images out of the directory so that once the interface is built, I don't need to manually create all of the <img /> tags.
If it was primarily going to be used in a Windows environment, I'd have no problem going with IIS Express, since I'm mainly a .NET MVC developer and this would be perfect for me... However, the fact of the matter is that a large amount of our client base is also OS X users.
I did find this Java one jlHttp, and I also found this thread here on SO, but I don't think I understand enough about either one of them to accomplish what I'm looking for.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
I'm looking for the same thing, and the two best options I've found were Flying Ant cd web server and Stunnix. Of the two, Flying Ant is cheaper, and I've tested it with success on my project.
I found Mongoose very convenient for this exact purpose. It's crossplatform, lightweight and requires minimum configuration. You may be interested in this project that uses Mongoose to display pictures in a folder tree or FTP directory.
How about Node.js
It says it runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows.

How would I created a flexible EC2 Windows 2008 boot script?

If you look at the Linux ecosystem (especially the Ubuntu and Alestic EC2 images) there is a common technique where the VMs are pre-configured to look at the EC2 user-data and use it as a boot script. The nice thing about this approach is that you can write a boot script that further provisions your machine, allowing you to avoid making a new image every time your software that runs on the machine changes.
I want to do the same thing for Windows, but given that I'm an Mac and Linux guy, I'm a bit lost on where to start. My requirements are:
This must run on Windows Server 2008
A bootstrap script needs to start when the machine boots up, read the user-data file by pulling down the contents http://169.254.169.254/1.0/user-data
The bootstap script then needs to run the contents of that file as if it were a script
The script embedded in the user-data needs to run in such a way that it has access to the desktop environment (ie: it can launch a browser, etc).
I'm not quite sure how services work in Windows or if I need to enable auto-login, so any advice here would be appreciated. The ultimate goal is to run a Java program that launches some custom software that in turn launches a web browser (IE, Firefox, etc) and is capable of taking screenshots.
The screenshot part is interesting, because in the past when I've tried this the only way I could get something other than a black screen was to have UltraVNC or RealVNC boot up as a service, though I don't know why that helped.
I'm looking for answers to three specific questions, as well as any general advice:
Should I be focussing on a Windows service or auto-login + bat file in the "Startup" folder?
If I use a Windows service, is there anything special that I need to do to make sure desktop access and/or screenshots are available?
Do you recommend any tools for common Linux commands, like curl or wget? Last time I used Windows I used Cygwin a lot, but is there something more appropriate to use here?
I have not tried auto-login on Windows instances in EC2, but here's the support document on how to enable it.
We boot-strap our Windows instances using a custom AMI with a custom Windows 'install' service already installed. The boot-strap installer reads a URL from user-data at startup. The URL points to a ZIP file stored in S3. The installer then downloads, un-zips, and executes the actual application installer -- in our case a simple CMD fie.
This setups allows us to have one base AMI and then be able to easily overlay 15+ different application configurations (without having to rebuild the AMI). If you only have one application configuration this may be overkill for your situation.
The only trouble we ran into was having our installer service start to early -- changing the service startup mode to "Automatic Delayed" fixed that issue.
We wrote our boot-strap installer in Java, launched via YAJSW, because we're comfortable with it. If you just want a few simple Unix tools, most are available pre-compiled for Windows, for example wget.
For something completely different, you could try PsExec to configure the instance after it has booted.
You can try using RightScale's free developer account to create plain Powershell scripts and associate them with your Windows instances to run at boot time. The RightScale dashboard solves exactly the problems you are trying to solve above.
DISCLAIMER: I work for RightScale.
As for screen capture CutyCapt is a simple tool you can point at a URL and generate an image from.
Unxutils is a great solution for those looking for unix tools on Windows. It's got the wget.exe that you're looking for, however, using Powershell to download stuff is not so bad either:
$wc = new-object system.net.webclient
$wc.DownloadFile("http://stackoverflow.com","test.html")
If you can write a batch file to do your setup, then you can run it at startup of the vm by doing this:
1. Run REGEDT32.EXE.
2. Modify the following value within HKEY_CURRENT_USER:
Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ParseAutoexec
1 = autoexec.bat is parsed
0 = autoexec.bat is not parsed
As an answer to #3, I would say that you can do just about anything in a batch file that you need which includes downloading from a ftp server (but not from a http server). I am really interested in this stuff and so if you have questions, try asking me.
If you use Elastic Beanstalks you can use this:
Customizing the Software on EC2 Instances Running Windows
It uses YAML formatting standards, e.g.
packages:
msi:
mysql: http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-Net/mysql-connector-net-6.6.5.msi/from/http://cdn.mysql.com/
or
sources:
"c:/myproject/myapp": http://s3.amazonaws.com/mybucket/myobject.zip
I know this is a little bit late to help out with the original post but for anyone who is still reading this one solution is to use the http://cloudinitnet.codeplex.com/ project. The service is easily installed using a powershell script and will create a local administrator account to use while running.
The goal for this project was to replace the Cloud-Init project used in Amazon Linux and Ubuntu.

What is the easiest way to install a R web application through RApache?

I use windows XP and R for my desktop use. And a shared hosting account (at some company) for my web hosting needs.
I wish to create an R web application and I understand that one such way is by using R with Apache through RApache , but since my current shared hosting plan doesn't allow me to install RApache I am a bit stuck.
So... (and here's my question) what would be the easiest/fastest/cost-effective way to get started?
Buying a more expensive hosting package ?
Hosting the thing myself? (on windows ?!)
switch to some other hosting company that permits the use of RApache?
Any suggestion will be most helpful.
Self-hosting is an option if you insist on using RApache. This might be easier than you think. Here's a link to a blog post i read a month ago before i decided to buy the hardware and server my own files. i just watched this seven minute YouTube video tutorial entitled "R Web Application–'Hello World' using RApache" I believe this was just posted today.
In seven minutes, the author walks through building a "hello world" Site using RApache then walks through a more ambitious example, building a user-input form to collect inputs then deliver them to a particular R function--pretty much a exemplary slice of what i suspect most people would want to use RApache for.
A second option is using a web framework. My recommendation here is Django. Why? It's written in Python so you can access R functionality via the python bindings (RPy2). Second, if you are not an experienced web developer, Django is in many ways, a great framework to begin with because it's truly a "full-stack" solution--it works more or less out of the box. In addition, there is a substantial and growing body of quality step-by-setp tutorials, code snippets, and even packaged django Sites, to learn from.
it seems they provide a VMWare image to get up and running quickly.
I suggest you download VMWare player and try the image. Since RApache isn't available for Windows, this is the most simple way, I guess. I wouldn't use that for hosting, but I would first try whether this stack is actually the right thing for your app. Also, this allows you testing things locally.
Doug,
Should I read your suggestion as saying that a Django app can call the RPy2 functionality without RApache? If so, that sounds like a solution for folks on shared hosting who can't install the RAPache module.