I was experiencing a deep apache headache (php5 wouldn’t load into apache2 via apt-get) on my ubuntu 8.10 desktop, after much fruitless searching, led me to a “plan b” answer: lighttpd. It’s faster, more svelte on the resources, and one of my favorite programmers swears by it, so I’m open to trying it.
However, I then spent another 45 minutes, troubleshooting a lighttpd problem — turns out there’s an issue specific to ubuntu. I set up a virtual web site (easier than it is in apache2) but the files in the “images” subdirectory won’t show. Search on “lighttpd images 404″ didn’t help, until I found the answer.
There is a section of the lighttpd.conf file (again, ubuntu only, apparently) that will cause you problems with subsequent virtual site hosting:
$HTTP["remoteip"] =~ “127.0.0.1″ {
(to the closing curly bracket)
Just comment it out and your images subdirectory works again.
While we’re at it, these instructions helped to get my virtual hosts running. Very nice.
