Apple Mac OS X Server (Administrator’s Guide) - Manual (Page 340)

340 Chapter 8
You can avoid this problem by carefully setting access privileges for the site files using the
Sharing module of Server Settings. Mac OS X Server uses a predefined group named “www,”
which contains the Apache processes. You need to give the www group read and write access
to files within the Web site. You also need to assign read and write access to the Web site
administrator (owner) and None (no access) to Everyone.
If you are concerned about Web site security, you may choose to leave WebDAV disabled and
use Apple file service or FTP service to modify the contents of a Web site instead.
Understanding Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME)
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) is an Internet standard for specifying what
happens when a Web browser requests a file with certain characteristics. You can choose the
response you want the Web server to make based on the file’s suffix. Your choices will
depend partly on what modules you have installed on your Web server. Each combination of
a file suffix and its associated response is called a MIME type mapping.
MIME Suffixes
A suffix describes the type of data in a file. Here are some examples:
m txt for text files
m cgi for Common Gateway Interface files
m gif for GIF (graphics) files
m php for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor” (embedded HTML scripts) used for WebMail, etc.
m tiff for TIFF (graphics) files
Mac OS X Server includes a default set of MIME type suffixes. This set includes all the suffixes
in the mime.types file distributed with Apache, with a few additions. If a suffix you need is
not listed, or does not have the behavior you want, use Server Settings to add the suffix to
the set or to change its behavior.
Note: Do not add or change MIME suffixes by editing configuration files.
Web Server Responses
When a file is requested, the Web server handles the file using the response specified for the
file’s suffix. Responses can be either an action or a MIME type. Possible responses include
m return file as MIME type (you enter the mapping you want to return)
m send-as-is (send the file exactly as it exists)
m cgi-script (run a CGI script you designate)
m imap-file (generate an IMAP mail message)
m mac-binary (download a compressed file in MacBinary format)