OpenBSD manual page server

Manual Page Search Parameters
HTTPD.CONF(5) File Formats Manual HTTPD.CONF(5)

httpd.conf — HTTP daemon configuration file

httpd.conf is the configuration file for the HTTP daemon, httpd(8).

httpd.conf is divided into four main sections:

User-defined variables may be defined and used later, simplifying the configuration file.
Global settings for httpd(8).
Listening HTTP web servers.
Media types and extensions.

Within the sections, a host address can be specified by IPv4 address, IPv6 address, interface name, interface group, or DNS hostname. If the address is an interface name, httpd(8) will look up the first IPv4 address and any other IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of the specified network interface. If ‘*’ is given as an address, it will be used as an alias for 0.0.0.0 to listen on all IPv4 addresses. Likewise, ‘::’ can be used to listen on all IPv6 addresses. A port can be specified by number or name. The port name to number mappings are found in the file /etc/services; see services(5) for details.

The current line can be extended over multiple lines using a backslash (‘\’). Comments can be put anywhere in the file using a hash mark (‘#’), and extend to the end of the current line. Care should be taken when commenting out multi-line text: the comment is effective until the end of the entire block.

Argument names not beginning with a letter, digit, or underscore must be quoted.

Additional configuration files can be included with the include keyword, for example:

include "/etc/httpd.conf.local"

Macros can be defined that will later be expanded in context. Macro names must start with a letter, digit, or underscore, and may contain any of those characters. Macro names may not be reserved words (for example, directory, log, or root). Macros are not expanded inside quotes.

For example:

ext_ip="10.0.0.1"
server "default" {
	listen on $ext_ip port 80
}

Here are the settings that can be set globally:

directory
Set the chroot(2) directory. If not specified, it defaults to /var/www, the home directory of the www user.
directory
Specifies the full path of the directory in which log files will be written. If not specified, it defaults to /logs within the chroot(2) directory.
number
Run the specified number of server processes. This increases the performance and prevents delays when connecting to a server. httpd(8) runs 3 server processes by default.

The configured web servers.

Each server must have a name and include one or more lines of the following syntax:

name
Specify an additional alias name for this server.
[no] authenticate [realm] with htpasswd
Authenticate a remote user for realm by checking the credentials against the user authentication file htpasswd. The file name is relative to the chroot and must be readable by the www user. Use the no authenticate directive to disable authentication in a location.
block drop
Drop the connection without sending an error page.
[return code [uri]]
Close the connection and send an error page. If the optional return code is not specified, httpd(8) denies access with a ‘403 Forbidden’ response. The optional uri argument can be used with return codes in the 3xx range to send a ‘Location:’ header for redirection to a specified URI.

The url may contain predefined macros that will be expanded at runtime:

The request path.
The optional query string of the request.
The IP address of the connected client.
The TCP source port of the connected client.
The remote user for HTTP authentication.
The request path and optional query string.
The configured IP address of the server.
The configured TCP server port of the server.
The name of the server.
option
Set the specified options and limits for HTTP connections. Valid options are:
number
Set the maximum body size in bytes that the client can send to the server. The default value is 1048576 bytes (1M).
number
Set the maximum number of requests per persistent HTTP connection. Persistent connections are negotiated using the Keep-Alive header in HTTP/1.0 and enabled by default in HTTP/1.1. The default maximum number of requests per connection is 100.
seconds
Specify the inactivity timeout in seconds for accepted sessions. The default timeout is 600 seconds (10 minutes). The maximum is 2147483647 seconds (68 years).
option
Set the specified options when serving or accessing directories. Valid options are:
[no] auto index
If no index file is found, automatically generate a directory listing. This is disabled by default.
string
Set the directory index file. If not specified, it defaults to index.html.
Disable the directory index. httpd(8) will neither display nor generate a directory index.
[no] fastcgi [socket socket]
Enable FastCGI instead of serving files. The socket is a local path name within the chroot(2) root directory of httpd(8) and defaults to /run/slowcgi.sock.
address [tls] port number
Set the listen address and port. This statement can be specified multiple times.
path {...}
Specify server configuration rules for a specific location. The path argument will be matched against the request path with shell globbing rules. A location section may include most of the server configuration rules except connection, listen on, location and tcp.
[no] log [option]
Set the specified logging options. Logging is enabled by default using the standard access and error log files, but can be changed per server or location. Use the no log directive to disable logging of any requests. Valid options are:
name
Set the name of the access log file relative to the log directory. If not specified, it defaults to access.log.
name
Set the name of the error log file relative to the log directory. If not specified, it defaults to error.log.
style
Set the logging style. The style can be common, combined or connection. The styles common and combined write a log entry after each request similar to the standard Apache and nginx access log formats. The style connection writes a summarized log entry after each connection, that can have multiple requests, similar to the format that is used by relayd(8). If not specified, the default is common.
[no] syslog
Enable or disable logging to syslog(3) instead of the log files.
Disable any previous block in a location.
option
Configure the document root and options for the request path. Valid options are:
directory
Set the document root of the server. The directory is a pathname within the chroot(2) root directory of httpd. If not specified, it defaults to /htdocs.
number
Strip number path components from the beginning of the request path before looking up the stripped-down path at the document root.
option
Enable or disable the specified TCP/IP options; see tcp(4) and ip(4) for more information about the options. Valid options are:
number
Set the maximum length the queue of pending connections may grow to. The backlog option is 10 by default and is limited by the kern.somaxconn sysctl(8) variable.
number
This option for the underlying IP connection may be used to discard packets with a TTL lower than the specified value. This can be used to implement the Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (GTSM) according to RFC 5082.
number
Change the default time-to-live value in the IP headers.
[no] nodelay
Enable the TCP NODELAY option for this connection. This is recommended to avoid delays in the data stream.
[no] sack
Use selective acknowledgements for this connection.
number
Set the socket-level buffer size for input and output for this connection. This will affect the TCP window size.
option
Set the TLS configuration for the server. These options are only used if TLS has been enabled via the listen directive. Valid options are:
file
Specify the certificate to use for this server. The file should contain a PEM encoded certificate.
string
Specify the TLS cipher string. If not specified, the default value "HIGH:!aNULL" will be used (strong crypto cipher suites without anonymous DH). See the CIPHERS section of openssl(1) for information about SSL/TLS cipher suites and preference lists.
params
Specify the DHE parameters to use for DHE cipher suites. Valid parameter values are none, legacy and auto. For legacy a fixed key length of 1024 bits is used, whereas for auto the key length is determined automatically. The default is none, which disables DHE cipher suites.
curve
Specify the ECDHE curve to use for ECDHE cipher suites. Valid parameter values are none, auto and the short name of any known curve. The default is auto.
file
Specify the private key to use for this server. The file should contain a PEM encoded private key and reside outside of the chroot(2) root directory of httpd.
string
Specify the TLS protocols to enable for this server. If not specified, the default value "all" will be used (all available protocols). Refer to the tls_config_parse_protocols(3) function for other valid protocol string values.

Configure the supported media types. httpd(8) will set the Content-Type of the response header based on the file extension listed in the types section. If not specified, httpd(8) will use built-in media types for text/css, text/html, text/plain, image/gif, image/png, image/jpeg, and application/javascript.

The types section must include one or more lines of the following syntax:

type/subtype name [name ...]
Set the media type and subtype to the specified extension name. One or more names can be specified per line. Each line may end with an optional semicolon.
file
Include types definitions from an external file, for example /usr/share/misc/mime.types.

The following example will start one server that is pre-forked two times and is listening on all local IP addresses. It additionally defines some media types overriding the defaults.

prefork 2

server "default" {
	listen on * port 80
}

types {
	text/css			css
	text/html			htm html
	text/txt			txt
	image/gif			gif
	image/jpeg			jpg jpeg
	image/png			png
	application/javascript		js
	application/xml			xml
}

The server can also be configured to only listen on the primary IP address of the network interface that is a member of the "egress" group.

server "default" {
	listen on egress port 80
}

Multiple servers can be configured to support hosting of different domains. If the same address is repeated multiple times in the listen on statement, the server will be matched based on the requested host name.

server "www.example.com" {
	alias "example.com"
	listen on * port 80
	listen on * tls port 443
	root "/htdocs/www.example.com"
}

server "www.a.example.com" {
	listen on 203.0.113.1 port 80
	root "/htdocs/www.a.example.com"
}

server "www.b.example.com" {
	listen on 203.0.113.1 port 80
	root "/htdocs/www.b.example.com"
}

server "intranet.example.com" {
	listen on 10.0.0.1 port 80
	root "/htdocs/intranet.example.com"
}

Simple redirections can be configured with the block directive:

server "example.com" {
	listen on 10.0.0.1 port 80
	block return 301 "http://www.example.com/"
}

server "www.example.com" {
	listen on 10.0.0.1 port 80
}

The syntax of the types section is also compatible with the format used by nginx, so it is possible to include its mime.types file directly:

include "/etc/nginx/mime.types"

htpasswd(1), httpd(8)

The httpd(8) program was written by Reyk Floeter <reyk@openbsd.org>.

March 6, 2015 OpenBSD-5.7