What I mean is that like many unix programs you may set it up in a variety of ways....
the default mac OSX install.
/private/etc/httpd/
contains all of the configurations...
that directory is also aliased as
/etc/httpd to comply with other more "normal" configuration techniques.
so never erase the link to etc at the root directory or a whole mess of things will be unfound.
recently Apache has been trying to get people to use the APACI layout which puts everything in
/usr/local/apache by default.
that means when you compile, the default is to put everything there and document root is set to be /usr/local/apache/htdocs
and configurations are in
/usr/local/apache/conf
also to make things more confusing, the default configuration which is compiled into the application may be overridden by command-line directives.
you will have to read the manual for that one.
once the httpd.conf is found in some location it may be extended in a variety of ways.
one way is to just have it read the contents of some directory by placing
Include /private/etc/httpd/users
at the bottom of the main httpd.conf file
then
as in my users directory,
users:
user1.conf
user2.conf
mod_jk.conf-local
xml.conf
which includes the configurations for the user Sites folders and the Tomcat/Cocoon installation.
The main issue is to first know whether you are using a default installation, or a custom installation. and read the necessary docs or notes about the compile time directives which indicate where your basic files are located.
and also, you can never just assume that some directive is already in place or shoud be working because it worked on another installation, blah...blah...
Read the httpd.conf caefully and check that the directories and files referenced therein actually are there and are workable.
wirh all of these things in mind you can get your server doing what you want it to do quickly and efficiently.
