Re: RE: Can you use variables inside a conf file?

[Steve Swift <Swifty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Out of curiosity, is it possible to define the same environment variable, but with different values, in different VirtualHosts? I presume this can't be done, as all of the hosts would inherit the same environment, including the environment variables.

For example, I have live and test versions of every "server" in our apache. The live server uses directory /cgi-bin/ and the test server uses /cgi-test/. This means that we have to define things like aliases in both live and test VirtualHosts. This means we can screw them up...

I've always wanted to define some sort of "local" variable in each VirtualHost, containing the location of the cgi directory. Then we could INCLUDE the same set of aliases in both the live and test hosts, but they would pick up their respective paths.

In fact, I've often wished that the Apache configuration would support its own internal variables, but so far nothing has happened. I must not be wishing hard enough.

On 28 January 2012 14:53, Rainer Jung <rainer.jung@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 25.01.2012 14:47, Desilets, Alain wrote:

       I use this syntax too, but I think it works for me only because of my  
       loading of a NON-STANDARD module, mod_define.

               http://people.apache.org/~rjung/mod_define/mod_define.html

It works for me and I don't have mod_define loaded.

Using an environment variable with the ${MYVAR} syntax works without mod_define. If you want to define the value of the variable inside the httpd configuration files, you would need mod_define.

Major difference: environment variables can't be changed with "apachectl restart" or "apachectl graceful", because in both cases the httpd parent process keept running and all child processes are forked from it with an unchanged environment.

If you define the variables inside the configuration and use the additional module, any changes to the definitions will become active by "apachectl restart" and "apachectl graceful".

Starting with the forthcoming Apache 2.4 defining variable inside the httpd configuration will become a core feature.

Regards,

Rainer


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Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk