Installation & Getting Started

If you tried to get Robin Hood to work before reading this and are not having any luck, you have come the the right place. Robin Hood requires libHTTP 0.9 to run. If you don't have libHTTP 0.9, you will need to download and install it first.

Installing libHTTP

libHTTP includes all of the source code required to build it as well a considerable amount of documentation for programmers. If you only wish to use it, move the file libHTTP.so to "/boot/home/config/lib/"

File Permissions

RobinHood respects the file permission attributes of the files in your web directory. If you find you are being asked for a password when viewing your web-site, you probably need to fix the permission attributes. Seperate permissions are maintained by the file system for owner, group, and other users. Each class is further sub-divided into read, write, and execute permissions. RobinHood will require a password for a file if others do not have read access for the file; CGIs require execute access. Access permissions can be changed with the "chmod" command. If you wish to make your entire web directory public, use the command: chmod -R o+r path
Where path is the path to your web directory. The CGI directory permission should be set with: chmod -R o+x path.
Where path is the path of the CGI directory.

Robin Hood Components

Robin Hood includes serveral executable components. The user interface and the server are seperate. The server can continue running in the background even after the UI has exited.

Configuring the Virtual Hosts File

The Virtual Hosts File contains the configuration info for the rhdaemon. You can open this file from the File menu of RHConsole or by opening /boot/home/config/settings/RHVirtualHosts. This file specifies which ports the server runs on and which web directories are assigned to each host name.

CGI Setup

Files located /cgi-bin, where the "/" is the root of the web directory, are executed instead of transfered. The cgi-bin directory can be a symlink shared by all your web directories if you wish; it may contain symlinks as well. You can find more information on CGIs and sample CGIs at The CGI Resource Index.

SSI Setup

Server Side Includes provide a mechanisim for creating dynamic html pages. A SSI file ( usually ends in .shtml ) looks like a normal html file, but contains directives to the server to inline other text elements in the document from another source. The source can be an static text document ( like a html document, or a plain text ), another shtml document ( which will also be parsed ), a CGI, or a shell command. shtml documents are created on the fly by the server and the client never sees the original shtml file. Files with a mime-type of "text/x-server-parsed-html" are assumed to be SSI files and will be treated as such. See NCSA HTTPd Tutorial: Server Side Includes for more information on using SSIs.


Robin Hood Web Server - A web server for BeOS
Copyright (C) 1999 Joe Kloss

BeOS is a registered trademark of Be Inc.