I configured Apache2 on a newly installed openSUSE 10.2 using YaST, which is how SUSE wants you to do it (rather than editing the files directly). YaST doesn’t report what files it will be modifying and can’t be undone once run, which causes me some anxiety.

Nevertheless, I still use YaST for the initial setup on SUSE because so many of the conf files are generated from source data within /etc/sysconfig/apache2. Additionally, conf files are scattered among /etc/apache2 and its conf.d, sysconfig.d and vhosts.d subdirectories. By

running YaST and seeing which files change, I can conform to openSUSE conventions.

And if I edited everything by hand, I could never run YaST for fear of overwriting things. With the following approach, I can use YaST in the future to learn how to make major configuration changes. At the cost of having to retrieve a couple hand-edited files from a local RCS archive.

Part I: Content-Independent Configuration

1. Keep a copy of the original conf files to determine what YaST has done:
   • cd /etc/apache2
   • mkdir ORIG; cp -p *.conf ORIG

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