When trying to serve up a Windows Media Video file from my Apache webserver, I ran into the problem of Firefox being unable to handle the file properly. It would simply load it as a plain text file, resulting in a bunch of jibberish representing the machine code of the video (as if you had opened the video with Notepad). It turns out that with a stock install, Apache does not know how to serve this type of file, so it serves it as the default, which is plain text. It’s an easy fix, you simply have to tell Apache how to serve these types of files. Open up /etc/mime.types and add the following line:
video/x-ms-wmv wmv
You will also need to add the following to your httpd.conf file:
AddType video/x-ms-wmv .wmv
Save and exit, restart Apache, and your browser should now prompt you for how you want to handle the file (Open/Save).

While updating OpenSSL & Apache on a Linux machine (2.4.7-10smp), I came across an error when running ‘make‘ for Apache:
/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/apr/libtool --silent --mode=link gcc -g -O2 -pthread -DLINUX=2 -D_REENTRANT -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_SVID_SOURCE -D_GNU_SOURCE -DAP_HAVE_DESIGNATED_INITIALIZER -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/apr/include -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/apr-util/include -I. -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/os/unix -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/server/mpm/prefork -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/modules/http -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/modules/filters -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/modules/proxy -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/include -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/modules/generators -I/usr/local/ssl/include/openssl -I/usr/local/ssl/include -I/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/modules/dav/main -export-dynamic -L/usr/local/ssl/lib -o dftables -L/usr/local/ssl/lib dftables.lo -lssl -lcrypto
./dftables > /usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/pcre/chartables.c
./dftables: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
make[3]: *** [/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/pcre/chartables.c] Error 127
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/pcre'
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib/pcre'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/httpd-2.0.55/srclib'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
I figured this was because of an inconsistency between the two versions of OpenSSL I had on my system. The system came with the SSL libraries installed in /usr/lib, which I had updated as symlinks to my newly & manually installed directory /usr/local/ssl/lib. That wasn’t enough. Apache (dftables specifically) needs to know where the new libraries are, so we must tell it where to look. Do this by adding our new lib dir to /etc/ld.so.conf. Open it up in your favorite editor and add the following line:
/usr/local/ssl/lib
Save & Exit, then run:
/sbin/ldconfig
Now re-run make in your Apache dir and everything should go smoothly. Note that you may want to run make distclean first just to be sure you start with a clean slate.

If you want to force all connections to your Apache web server to use SSL (https), you can do so with a simple .htaccess file inside the directory you want to protect:
# Force SSL connections
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]

Make sure you get all the proper spacing in there, or else it won’t work! I spent quite a bit of time pulling my hair out trying to get this to work, only to find out I was missing a space somewhere.

I was upgrading an Apache install from 1.3.33 to 1.3.34 last night, including the gzip module using: --activate-module=src/modules/gzip/mod_gzip.o, and during the make process I received the following error:
rm -f libgzip.a
ar cr libgzip.a mod_gzip.o mod_gzip_compress.o mod_gzip_debug.o
ranlib libgzip.a
make[4]: *** No rule to make target `libgzip.', needed by `lib'. Stop.
make[3]: *** [all] Error 1
make[2]: *** [subdirs] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/apache_1.3.34/src'
make[1]: *** [build-std] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/apache_1.3.34'
make: *** [build] Error 2
It turns out that there’s an entry in mod_gzip’s Makefile.tmpl file that confuses my system. The very first line of src/modules/gzip/Makefile.tmpl uses a variable named LIBEXT that’s not defined on my system, so it fails. It’s an easy fix, open up src/modules/gzip/Makefile.tmpl for editing and find:
LIB=libgzip.$(LIBEXT)
And replace with:
LIB=libgzip.a
Save & Exit, run make clean; make; make install in the Apache src dir and you should be good to go.